Vitality
by i-read-and-judge
Summary: I screamed. Was normal childbirth as painful as this? I didn't know, never would know. I was dying, being ripped apart from the inside, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. This was my own unborn child doing this to me. My Vitality.
1. Prologue

**I've been thinking about this for a while, and even though my friend advised me to wait to post this story until after **_**Not as Opposite as We Thought**_** is done, I just have zero patience. I've wanted to see a good story about a vampire hybrid (who wasn't Renesmee) on here for a long time. I've submitted it to those "tell me what you want me to write about and I'll write it" things. It didn't work. So, I have decided to make use of the old saying: If you want something done right you have to do it yourself. Please review and tell me if I **_**am**_** doing it right. I'd really appreciate it. One of the greatest joys as a writer is knowing people are reading your work.**

Prologue

Vitality (_noun):_ the ability of something to live and grow or continue in existence

Many people claim to hate themselves. They say all the horrible things that they have done willfully. They go to psychologists, they sit around depressed, and they jump off buildings. They can all pinpoint exactly what they did wrong.

I can't. My very existence is destructive. I was injurious before I was born, in the worst way possible, slowly killing my source of life. If I could have, I would have chosen never to be born, but I came nevertheless, like a hurricane comes. Destroying everything in its path. I'm an abomination, an oddity, and an atrocity.

I cannot say that I have atoned for what I have unknowingly done. I've taken away people's very existences too many times for me to count, all too aware of exactly what I was doing. It is how I survive.

Vitality, the last word gasped on my mother's breath as I took _hers_ away.


	2. Chapter 1

**Hello again. If you don't figure this out right away, the point of view in the prologue is different from the point of view here. You'll probably figure out how the two point of views are related later on in the story, since I'm not too good with the whole detective aspect, but I'd like to keep a little suspense in here for now just to improve the story. Nothing's as much fun if you know exactly how it's going to go.**

"Amanda, can you tell us the answer to the question on the board?"

My head snapped up. Mrs. O'Reilly was looking down at me in expectation.

"Oh, um, sorry, no," I managed to stutter out, embarrassed at being caught daydreaming.

"I thought so. Pay attention, Miss Martin." I sighed inwardly. Who could think about math during the last period on a Friday afternoon? Especially a Friday afternoon so close to the end of school. Trigonometry was hard enough to focus on anyway.

I looked at the board intently, as intently as a junior with serious math issues and a very strong desire to get the hell out of there can. It would be horrible to be caught spacing out again. Finals started next Monday and there was plenty of time for Mrs. O'Reilly to bring my grade down from the B- I was currently getting.

After what seemed like an eternity, the bell rang. I lugged my bag up onto my shoulder and set off to my locker. It would have taken a few seconds to get there under normal circumstances, but the hallways were so crowded and excitable due to it being Friday, it took minutes.

I finally managed to shove through the hoard, pointedly ignoring some idiot slapping me on the butt as I passed. Personal space much?

"Packed, isn't it," commented Maya from the locker two spaces down from mine. I snorted slightly, understatement.

"Want to wait until it thins out a bit to try to get out?" I asked her. She and I lived next door to each other and had a carpool together. Because we all have to do what we can to help the environment. Right.

"Would probably be wise," Maya agreed, a smile playing across her face. A guy stared at her. I didn't blame him. Maya was so pretty that if I didn't love her, I'd probably hate her.

She had salon-highlighted light brown hair, huge brown eyes and a beautifully structured face. She was also almost five-eleven and rail thin. No wonder she aspired to be a model.

Beside her, I looked so plain and short (five-three) that I sometimes wondered why she'd picked me, of all people to be her best friend and share in the popularity that being her friend accorded. It must have been my stellar personality. (Eye roll.)

"So you're coming to the party tonight, right?" Maya asked as we walked toward her car, it was her turn to drive today.

"I don't know. Don't you think we should study for finals? I mean, we're going to have to take them in a few days…"

"Come on, don't be such a worrywart. We need to get our minds off studying. I'm going to go insane if I review my history notes one more time. Please?"

"Do you even know whose house it's at?" I asked. I knew she didn't.

"Um, that guy, the one in your um… class?" she didn't have a clue.

"So how are we going to get there if you don't even know where it is?"

"Aaron's driving us." She sounded triumphant. Aaron was her boyfriend: muy popular, muy athletic, muy hot. Not my type, though.

I was between boyfriends at the moment, after Jordan and I had broken up about three months ago. I didn't care all that much, I had no strong feelings for the guy.

"Okay, fine. I'll go." We got into her car, a beat-up, second-hand little thing that was probably held together with superglue.

"Yes! Come over to my house at six and we can get ready together."

"Humph. You always convince me to do this sort of stuff!" I grumbled.

"That's because you trust me and my sheer awesomeness," Maya joked. I rolled my eyes at her.

"They're going to get stuck like that, you know."

"Huh?" Where did that come from?

"Your eyes are going to get stuck in that eye roll position," she said earnestly.

"That's just something moms tell kids so that they stop rolling their eyes and making weird faces."

"No, I seriously had this cousin who needed to get surgery to correct their eyes after they got stuck."

"I bet that was attractive."

"Not really. Hey Amanda, do you think you'll meet a guy at the party?" Maya had been trying to set me up with someone or other for about three years. I occasionally caved, but she never seemed to quit.

She was so stubborn as to believe that I'd never be happy until I found _The One._ She hadn't found her_ One_ yet and she was perfectly happy. I honestly didn't think she could pass Aaron off as soul mate material if she tried.

"Maya! Will you quit it already? I've seen all the guys in this dinky little town. It's not going to happen. If they're not taken, they're either ugly or jerks… or gay. Please, just… no."

"You will meet him someday, and when you do, I'll be right there saying 'I told you so' and then you'll have to admit I was right."

"Dream big," I commented.

We reached our neighborhood, a tiny quiet neighborhood in a tiny quiet town in the tiny state of Connecticut. Why did my parents decide to move here when I was three?

Maya dropped me off in front of my house and then drove the less than ten feet into her own driveway. We waved at each other as we walked into our respective houses.

"Remember! Six!" she called over to me.

"Whatever," I called back. Wild teenage parties were never all that much fun. Maya said that it was because I was too much of a priss to drink the alcohol. I didn't listen to her. This was the one of her harebrained schemes that I wouldn't cave in to.

I walked into the house and called out to my mother, "I'm home." Even though I was seventeen, my mom always insisted on knowing where I was all the time. She was over-protective of me. I thought it had something to do with me being an only child.

I proceeded to kill three hours with some studying for the finals. Maya had been right about me needing a break from the books, almost the whole time I was waiting impatiently for six to arrive so I could have an excuse to back away from my numerous notes. The longer I stared at them, the more stressed I seemed to get.

"Hey Mom," I said as I passed her on my way out the door with some clothes hung over my arm to consider for the party.

She turned around and I saw an older version of myself, but with lighter hair and hazel eyes. "Hi," she said. "Getting a lot of studying done? Where are you going?" She added the last question in suspiciously, eyeing the skirts, shorts, and tops draped over my arm.

"Just going to Maya's, then a party from there. I'm sleeping over at her house afterwards. We really need a break. I feel like my head's going to explode if I cram anything else into it."

She grinned. "I understand, but don't stay up too late."

"Thanks Mom!" I said as I walked quickly up to the front door.

"And be responsible!" she called after me. I chuckled. I was never anything but. All of my friends found it annoying.

I onto Maya's porch. I didn't even have to ring the doorbell, because she ran up to the door and yanked me in.

"What'd you bring?" she asked excitedly. I held out my arm for her to observe.

"Opinions?" I inquired.

"Go with the white skirt and the green tank top," she decided.

I shrugged and we walked up the stairs to her room, where we spent the next too hours eating pizza, watching television (she had one in her room, the lucky duck) and applying make-up, doing hair, and going through clothes.

When we were done, we studied our reflections in her mirror. I had to be careful not to compare mine to hers.

My hair was a dark blond, streaked through with lighter blond from the sun and my eyes were a very bright blue. The type of blue you often see on very dark-haired people (my dad, for instance).

Those were the only things I really liked about myself. My face didn't stand out from the crowd in any way. I wasn't beautiful, my features didn't have the grace that Maya's did, but neither did I have any huge, obvious flaws. My vivid eyes were a little too close together and I had a button nose but nothing about me was different in any way. Walk down any street and you'll see many faces that look like mine.

"You look great!" Maya exclaimed. I raised one eyebrow at her.

"Seriously! That green really brings out your eye color. I wish my eyes were blue. Brown is so boring." I raised my eyebrow again.

"It's going to get stuck like that, you know," she said, smirking.

I burst into giggles. We were such goofballs sometimes.

Aaron pulled up in front of Maya's driveway. We walked down to it. I got in the backseat and Maya got shotgun. A perk of having your boyfriend driving the car.

"Hey babe," Aaron grunted as he put the pedal to the metal and sped off to God knows where.

Aaron was unnaturally quiet, even for his inarticulate self, and Maya and I chattered to entertain ourselves and fill up the silence.

"You think Liz's going to be there?" I asked.

"Of course! She never misses a party, and a chance to hook up with everyone's boyfriends." She glanced suspiciously toward Aaron out of the corner of her eye. I grinned toothily at her.

We prattled on for the rest of the ride, which was a very short time. In a town this small, everyone's close by.

We entered the building, which was full to the brim with teenagers and head pounding music. Maya grabbed a drink from the keg off to the side of the room and started dancing.

"Come on!" she started dragging me out from my corner. "Dance! Have fun! We're only young once. These are the best days of our lives!"

"Calm down," I insisted. "I'll just grab some punch." Anything to get out of dancing.

I got over to the punch bowl. It was unnaturally red and was probably full of sugar. Way to rot my teeth. I shrugged and poured myself a big cup of it. I was thirsty and it was better than the beer.

The taste seemed off somehow, but I couldn't quite figure out why. I poured myself another glass to stall and keep from having to join Maya. I didn't really like parties.

When I'd finished my second glass, I suddenly felt different. The music didn't seem so obnoxious and the thought of dancing sounded fun. I felt looser, freer, less of my usual uptight self. I found Maya.

"Have you been drinking?" she asked, looking a little worried.

"No! I feel fine! I just had some punch!"

"Dude," said Aaron, who was standing next to us. "That stuff was practically all alcohol." He rolled his eyes.

"They're going to stick like that you know!" I laughed. I didn't care about anything much at that moment. I was a having a good time.

Maya grabbed me by the arm and led me outside. "Amanda! Are you okay? You never drink!"

"Well, I didn't know…" My words felt thick in my mouth but I went right on through them anyway.

"Sit right here and get some fresh air. I don't want anything to happen to you that you'll regret later. Besides, this town is so safe, nothing's going to happen to you if you stay out here." She lowered me into a sitting position on the grass. "Stay!"

I nodded and stayed. I didn't see what the problem was, but Maya had said to stay here…

I all of a sudden heard the slightest noise. I couldn't place what it was. Someone appeared before me. I looked up into their face. The last thing I saw before I blacked out was a pair of blood red eyes.


	3. Chapter 2

**Sorry about the cliffhanger. I just love that literary tool. Really builds up suspense and interest. On with the story. REVIEW!**

The first thing I was aware of was the pain. It felt like a rock and roller was playing a drum solo on my head. The next was that I was lying somewhere very soft. The third was that I felt sore all over. I opened my eyes a crack. The light rushed in and stabbed them. Where was I?

"Oh, thank God, you're up." I turned and saw Maya sitting on the bed next to me.

"What happened?" I asked groggily.

"Well, you naively assumed the punch was nonalcoholic, drank about seven glasses of it, and got disgustingly drunk. Did you black out?"

"I…I guess so." I thought back. "The last thing I remember was you making me sit on the grass. Then I saw someone…" I shook my head, trying to clear my thoughts. There was no way I'd seen someone with red eyes. That wasn't possible, except maybe on albinos, but if I said it, I'd sound insane. Maybe I was insane. I'd probably imagined it.

"You were hard to sneak into the house. It's a good thing you stayed here, we'd never have gotten past your parents." I silently agreed. There was no way my overprotective mother and father would ever not come and check on me and not notice something like that.

"That is the last party I am ever going to. Do you have any idea what this has done to my head? And is feeling sore part of a hangover?"

She frowned. "No. Did you work out yesterday or something? Maybe it's just that."

I was puzzled. I decided it didn't matter. The headache was about ten times worse than the ache in my body. "Owwwww," I groaned.

Maya smiled ruefully. "Your first hangover, now this I'm glad I witnessed." She twisted her hands like a director of a movie. "This is such a Kodak moment."

I groaned. "Maya! This is not a good time. I have to get back to my house. Finals are in two days."

Maya snorted. "Good luck studying with that headache."

I glared daggers at her. "I think I'll need it. Got any aspirin?"

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After my hangover (the word even sounded unpleasant) had let up a little, I holed myself up in my room and got to studying.

Math was a nightmare. It had never really made sense to me, and even though I could study the concepts, actually doing the new problems presented on the exam was going to be pure torture.

Everything else I felt I could pass reasonably well. I wasn't an honor student or anything, but I worked hard to keep my grades up, a tendency that sometimes aggravated my friends when they wanted to hang out and I had to actually do the homework that most people promptly stuffed into their binders and forgot about.

Sunday night, I reappeared in the kitchen for dinner. I knew I looked like a mess. I was in a very old and tattered pair of shorts and the baggiest tee shirt I owned. My hair was shoved back into a bun and I had circles under my eyes from staying up too late the night before.

"Amanda, are you okay?" my mother asked, sounding worried. "Good grades are important, sweetie, but you're working yourself too hard."

"Try to actually get some sleep tonight before the tests," my dad joked from over at the table. Dang, it was noticeable.

I didn't bother responding. I did not want to get my father started. He thought he was funny. I sat down at the seat between my parents and my mom came over and plopped the last dish on the table.

I surveyed the food put out on the table. My mom was a great cook. There were chicken, roasted potatoes, green beans, and a salad. None of these were my particular favorites. Which is why it was weird that I was practically salivating over it.

I ate about three times what I normally ate at dinner. My mom, being my mom, noticed.

"You must've really worked up an appetite," she said. She smiled at me. I attempted to smile back. My mouth was too full.

I dragged myself back up to my room and slept soundly and dreamlessly. I woke up the next morning to the sound of my obnoxious alarm clock. I was about to swat at the snooze button and sleep in until I suddenly remembered what day it was. Ugh, Mondays were bad enough without throwing three final exams in.

I hauled my lazy butt out of bed and threw on a pair of shorts and a tee shirt. I hastily ran a brush through my hair, brushed my teeth and ran down the stairs, number two pencils and calculator in hand.

I grabbed a granola bar and ran out the door to my car, Marv, a cheap piece of junk I had been saving up for since I was fourteen. You've got to look towards the future.

Maya was leaning against the passenger side door with a smirk on her face. Morning person.

"How do you do it?" I groaned. "Teach me your secrets."

"I'd tell you, but then I'd have to kill you," she teased. "And don't worry about it. You've been studying all weekend."

"Honestly, can you read my mind or something?"

"Nope, I just know you too well," she said as she swung open her door dramatically and ducked her head so she could get in. This was one area where I was actually glad I was shorter than she was. Maya always had to hunch over whenever she sat in Marv. He was a tiny thing, but he had personality.

We entered the big, bustling halls of high school. "Break a leg," I called over my shoulder to Maya as we were separated by the crowd. They were all trying to get to the same auditorium to take the exams.

"Likewise," she yelled.

I allowed myself to drift off and review fundamental principles of mathematics. I would be carried by the crowd in the right direction. Whoever had scheduled the tests must've really hated me. Making math first on a Monday morning. It was just evil. Pure, unadulterated evil.

I found my alphabetical space next to Jenny Mansfield. I tapped my pencil against my desk nervously. Jenny shot me a dirty look. I sighed. Let the games begin.

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I was in my math class. It seemed completely normal, except that we were learning basic addition and subtraction. Mrs. O'Reilly wasn't acting anything like my old elementary school teachers, though. She was snapping at us and drilling it into our heads like always.

She called on me. I knew I didn't have my hand up, but she called on me anyway. "Miss Martin, what is six plus eight?"

Of course I knew the answer to this. I wasn't a complete imbecile, after all. But for some strange reason, I couldn't say the answer. It was on the very tip of my tongue, but nothing came out.

"Do you know the answer or do you not?"

I was frozen in my seat, unable to move. I tried to tell her the answer, but gave up. "No ma'am. I don't," I admitted meekly.

"Then you fail!" shrieked Mrs. O'Reilly in a voice that sounded like it came from a really suspenseful horror movie. "You fail and you will never make anything of yourself! You will work at a fast food restaurant and fall deeper and deeper into anonymity!"

I screamed and jerked myself up, into a sitting position, gasping for breath. That was the most realistic dream I'd ever had. I'd made it through the exams three days ago with minimal difficulty, except where math was concerned. We were going to be getting our grades back today, along with the results of those tests. This was one circumstance where ignorance truly was bliss.

I glanced at my alarm clock. Three in the morning. I turned back onto my stomach and tried to fall asleep again. No dice. I sighed and accepted the fact that I was going to look like hell for my last day of school.

Surprisingly, after about half an hour of tossing and turning I fell unconscious like I'd been hit over the head with a frying pan. I slept dreamlessly the rest of the night.

I woke up the next morning with much groaning and cursing on my part. I internally celebrated that this was the last time for a while that I'd have to get up this early.

I practically skipped down the stairs after dressing in my favorite skirt and pink top. This was extremely uncharacteristic behavior for me. I was never this perky in the morning. The last day of school was always special, though. This one was especially special. Next year I would be a senior.

I wouldn't necessarily rule the school, that was someone-more-popular's job. I would be somewhere close, though. With Maya as a best friend, doors were definitely open that wouldn't otherwise be to a small, quiet, slightly studious girl.

Maya and I met up at her car (it was her turn) and drove to school in uncharacteristic silence. The only noise in that car was the radio. Some top-ten artist was rapping about how they wanted to beat someone up. You'd think they'd have come up with some new rapping material by now.

When we arrived, we were set loose upon the school for a short time before the graduation ceremony. We were supposed to go to each of our teachers in an orderly fashion and receive our grades. Theoretically, that was how it was supposed to work. In practice, it was chaotic, every man, woman, and child for himself.

"You'll be fine!" Maya said to me. Her first words to me the whole morning. "Don't worry." She then charged into the crowd and headed for a classroom.

I took a deep breath and headed into the throng. I knew where I was headed first: Trigonometry. Some people would save it for last, but in my experience it was always best to get the unpleasant things over with.

I somehow managed to push my way towards Mrs. O'Reilly's classroom. It was weirdly empty in there. Only two students were in the room, and they were both reading little slips of paper. _Well, I did want to get it over with_. The teacher saw me and reached into her folder and handed me an identical slip of paper. I silently took it and read my grade.

Exam grade: 86Final grade: 82

I let out an enormous sigh of relief. I had done it. I had gotten through Trigonometry, a class that I had thought I would fail since day one. I had succeeded in this, so I could succeed in anything. Nothing could be harder than this.

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**Two weeks later**

Maya called and awakened me at eleven in the morning. While not technically early, it still was unjust. She knew perfectly well that, given the opportunity, I would sleep the whole day. We weren't that far into vacation. I needed recovery time.

"So you're coming to that pool party today, right?" she demanded.

"Are you trying to kill me?" I asked. "Because if you are, you're doing one hell of a job."

"Just answer the question."

Out of nowhere, a sudden wave of nausea hit me. I dropped the cell phone and sprinted to the bathroom. I hit my knees and vomited my guts up into the toilet. I gagged and rinsed my mouth out with water about ten times. I really hated getting sick.

I walked back to my room and picked up the phone.

"Oh my God! Are you okay? I thought you'd had a heart attack or something. I was this close to calling nine-one-one."

"Relax," I said. "I'm not in any danger. I think I ate something funky, though. I was just sick."

"Oh my God!" she said for the second time. "Do you need me to come over there? We don't need to go to the party."

"It's okay. I think I might've gotten it out of my system. I feel fine." And strangely, I really did. The upset stomach had left as quickly as it had come.

"So you can come?" Maya asked again.

"You have a one-track mind," I accused. "And yes, I'll come."

"Yes!" she squealed. "Come over here and bring your light blue bikini. We only have an hour."

She hung up the phone as I hunted through my drawers for the desired swimsuit, got dressed, and brushed my hair, which was going absolutely nuts in the humidity.

I walked quickly to her house and she practically pulled me inside. Typically Maya, she was already completely ready. Her hair, instead of being frizzy and huge with the humidity, was hanging sleekly down to her shoulders. She was wearing a hot pink swimsuit that perfectly showed off her tan. I tried not to be jealous.

"Why are you doing my hair for a pool party?" I asked.

"So that it looks good! Besides, we're not actually going to swim!"

I sighed and let her finish straightening my hair. I then allowed her to put approximately three pounds of make-up on my face. I guessed I really wasn't going to be swimming.

"Okay, now go get the swimsuit on already!" She pulled me out of the chair I was sitting on and nudged me towards my pile of stuff.

I gave her a look. "The things I do for you."

"Only because you love me," she teased.

I slipped into the bikini. I sighed and checked my reflection in Maya's mirror. That was strange. Since when did I have boobs? Maybe I was going through a really late growth spurt.

I noticed one more thing. My stomach had never really been flat, per say, but it had never really bulged out. I turned to the side. My stomach was definitely sticking out. Not a lot, but it was most certainly there.

I berated myself mentally. I knew there would be repercussions for all the laying around I had been doing since school ended. I hadn't been sticking to any sort of exercise plan. I would just do a few sit-ups and watch what I ate. It would go away soon. It had to.


	4. Chapter 3

**Again with the inability to update on time. For that, I truly apologize. This story isn't nearly as popular as my other one, but I still feel like I owe it to you guys to keep going with what I've started. I'll really try to update more regularly now. I'm on summer break and too used to my usual workload, so I might just substitute writing in for homework.**

I pulled myself onto my feet, huffing and puffing, after doing about five hundred crunches. There was seriously no justice in this world. How people like Maya could eat like pigs and people like me had to work off every bite that we ate just to maintain. I figured I'd gotten pretty good at this until I got lazy over the summer. But now things were strange. I was following all those stupid rules that the magazines suggested, and I had actually gotten a little bigger over the past week. This was ridiculous.

I had also been sick a few more times. Nothing serious, and nothing that kept me from doing anything, but it sort of sucked to puke almost every morning. I was turning into an unintentional bulimic and I still was gaining weight.

I took a shower, careful not to look at my body in the bathroom mirror, and then went over to see Maya. We were planning on going to the mall today. Of course, our town didn't actually have a mall. It was too dinky. So we were going in Maya's car to the next town over, which had a population big enough to support more than ten stores.

She came to the door before I even knocked and dragged half dragged me to her car. She'd tactfully pretended not to notice my recent ballooning, which was making me love her even more as a best friend. Then again, it wasn't more than ten pounds or so. Okay, so it was fourteen. Who besides the bathroom scale was counting?

"Did you get tanner?" I remarked in envy. She was honest to God going to get skin cancer before she was thirty, but she was going to look great doing it.

"Yeah. I went to the beach yesterday. I asked you to come. Remember?" She looked at me pointedly. She had good reason. I had refused to come almost anywhere with her since that pool party.

Nothing much had happened, but I'd felt critical eyes on me. Quite honestly, if that was the only thing they could come up with to gossip about, I felt sorry for them. That didn't mean I still wasn't affected by it though. I almost felt like blaming Maya and her stupid popularity and her niceness. If it wasn't for that, I'd be the invisible girl in the corner.

Today, I'd finally given in. I liked spending time with Maya. She and I could always talk.

"So how's Aaron?" I asked her. I hadn't seen him around in a while.

"Camp counseling over the summer," she answered. "It's just a day thing though."

That explained a lot. I should probably get a summer job too. There are only so many workouts a girl can do in a day.

"That's cool," I replied. "What kind of camp?'

"I think it's some sort of sports adventure thing. Sounds boring as hell." And it did. We happily chattered about summer plans. Criticizing, analyzing, and prioritizing. Then it started raining.

"Oh man!" she exclaimed. "Now we're going to get wet!"

"It's not raining that hard," I pointed out. "It's just really gray and gross looking." I surveyed our surroundings.

We strutted into the mall like we owned it. Or at least Maya did, I just faked it. And man I was not much of an actress.

We immediately began the hunt for both cute clothes to try on and cute boys to ogle. The cute clothes thing was easy. The cute boys part was a bit more of a challenge. We liked to play a game giving them grades.

"A- over there," Maya nudged me. A tall blond boy was leaning against the wall, talking to some of his less genetically-gifted friends. His hair fell down into his eyes and Maya and I practically stared.

"Don't you have a boyfriend?" I asked.

"So?" she answered back, sounding for all the world like a hormonal teenage girl. At least she had a good excuse.

"Oh. My. God," my mouth practically dropped.

"What?" asked Maya eagerly. She scanned the room and her eyes stopped. Her mouth dropped too.

"At least an A+++++++++++," I said. There was no need to say more. Standing a few yards from us was the most beautiful person I had ever seen. Understatement of the decade. He was simply perfect.

His hair was a glossy light brown, carelessly cut and tousled. He stood at about six foot one and, though he was lean, he was by no one's definition skinny. Not that I was looking hard or anything, but I could totally see some serious definition underneath those baggy clothes that all boys our age seemed to wear. And his face. He actually made Maya seem plain. Every single one of his features was sculpted and harmonized perfectly with the rest of his face. What didn't make sense was my sudden uneasiness. I put it down to nervousness.

"Holy crap he's looking at you!" Maya whisper-squealed. I shot her a pained look. "Sorry," she mouthed.

It was true. He was looking at me. But it definitely wasn't a "come hither" sort of look. More a look of curiosity, and strangely, satisfaction. Maya didn't see that though.

"Go! Go talk to him!" she elbowed me. I looked toward him again. His eyes, an ordinary brown, the one part of him that wasn't perfect, met mine. He winked and seemed to smirk. That was it. I took a tentative step in that direction when I was immediately shoved by the shoulder of Liz, school slut. She turned her head around and scowled at me.

"What was that for?" I protested.

"He's mine! Or he's going to be. Just stay out of my way."

I looked at her blankly. If she wanted the guy so badly I wasn't going to wrestle her in public for him.

"Exactly. He so wouldn't go for some fatso like you."

The words hit me like a sack of knives. Okay, I was above goal weight, but I wasn't fat. I looked down at my t-shirt. So I was rounder. Big deal. I fought back tears.

Maya rushed over to me and led me to the nearest rest room. I let go and started crying for real. She put her arms around me and when I had finished sniffing, stepped back a little.

"What happened?" she asked. I told her.

"And you actually listened to what Liz said? She'd tell anyone anything to get to him. And jeez, you don't need him. All looks and no brains probably." She sympathized.

"But I have gained weight!" I insisted. "And I think I'm going crazy too. I mean, all of a sudden I start getting fatter by the day, throwing up my breakfast, and now I'm crying over something _Liz_ of all people said."

Maya stopped. She looked at me harder, inquisitively.

"Amanda, what haven't you told me?"

"What the..."

"Don't play games with me. We promised we'd tell each other!" She looked genuinely upset. I couldn't figure it out.

"Will you please just tell me what strange idea is going through your mind?" I exclaimed, causing an old lady who'd hobbled out of a toilet stall to look at me strangely.

Maya pulled me over and bent down so she could whisper in my ear.

I heard her and burst out laughing. That was ridiculous. It was a ludicrous idea. Maya was the one going insane, not me.

"Think about it Amanda. When were you due for your next period?"

"How the heck am I supposed to know?"

"You're supposed to monitor these things!" she exclaimed.

"Since when?"

"Since you had sex without telling me," she said. She looked incredibly bitter. That explained the hurt on her face.

"Maya, I didn't. Never in my life. I swear. I think that'd be something I'd remember."

"But you have all the signs..."

"Maya, I'm not some slut who gets pregnant at seventeen. I mean, imagine what my mother would do." Maya winced. "Exactly."

"Listen, I never said you were. But maybe you didn't remember it..."

"Huh?"

"Like if you were drunk or high or something."

"Maya, I hate to point out the flaw in your theory, but I don't drink or do drugs. Jeez, first I'm a slut, now I'm a druggie."

"Well there was that time the last weekend before summer..."

"That was two weeks ago! I paid enough attention in sex ed. to know that you don't start to show pregnancy at two weeks." I shot her my most sarcastic look.

"Listen, I'm not accusing you of anything. It's either pregnancy, insanity, or some strange undiscovered new disease, and we have the technology to eliminate one of the three," she said calmly.

"Oh no," I said. I was not going to go into a store in a mall where all the kids at school hung out to buy a pregnancy test. That was just ridiculous. I was a virgin for God's sake! Why didn't she get that?

"Oh shut up! I'll get it if you don't want to! You can wait outside. You can stay in here. If it's not true then there's no reason why you shouldn't."

I sighed dramatically. "Okay, let's get this over with."

"I'll be right back."

I studied the room while Maya was gone. Typical public restroom. Not too clean. The toilet seat cover dispensers were empty. Someone had graffitied the stalls with initials and tiny hearts. I tried desperately to keep my mind occupied so that I wouldn't have to think about... Well, that wasn't going to work.

Maya came in with a plastic bag. She pulled out a little box, and out of that little box she pulled a stick.

"Pee on this," she said as she handed the stick to me without ceremony.

"I can't believe I'm doing this!" I protested as I walked into a stall, but I was panicking slightly internally, just from the object in my hand.

Maya was waiting for me and seized it when I came back out.

"I'm not sure you want to touch that," I reminded her. "And it takes a little while I think." I stared at the cracks in the tile grout, deep breathing.

If I was actually... Well, then I guess there was some creepy religious shit going on around here. Immaculate conception. Sure. People would believe that one.

"Amanda," squeaked Maya in a tiny voice. I looked up. She tossed the stick in the sink and hugged me. And that's when I knew.


	5. Chapter 4

**This is a bit of a sad time. I just submitted the epilogue of my first story on fanfiction. It's a bit pathetic, but I guess I'm going to miss it. Luckily, I still have Vitality and all of you lovely people to get me through this difficult time. (Picture me rolling my eyes). Now just sit back and enjoy the drama. **

There was no way. No way in hell was this happening to me. This was some other girl's worst nightmare. I wouldn't ever be in this situation. I was smart (except in math). I didn't drink (except for that one time, and it wasn't even my fault), and I certainly didn't have sex.

"Maya, what's going to happen to me?" I asked in a tiny voice, like she was my mother or something, and I was a little child.

"Well, you could always..."

"No! I can't! I can't just abort!" I sobbed.

"Why not?" asked Maya, looking truly concerned.

"I don't know. It's not like it's a religious reason or anything, but I just can't. I just know that I'd never be able to live with myself for killing something that could be a person, if it isn't already. God, I just don't know."

"But your parents..."

"I know. They'd flip. Everything would be terrible. Everyone would know. I can't have that happen."

"So what can you do if you're not going to tell your parents? Amanda, you need to think seriously."

"I am thinking seriously," I said. "Once I start actually looking really pregnant, I can run away. I have enough money to live on for a few months, and then I can earn more. I'll give it up for adoption. I can just come back and graduate a year late. Maybe they'll suspect, but no one will be able to prove anything. That's why you can't tell anyone."

Maya looked dumbstruck. "That has got to be the stupidest idea you have ever had. You can't just run away. You're seventeen. Where're you going to go? What the heck are you going to do for a job? And what makes you think your parents won't find you?"

"They won't," I insisted. "I'll dye my hair for a disguise if I need to. I'll do odd jobs. I can make this work. I can empty my savings and find a place to stay. Please, don't tell anyone."

"I'm an idiot, but I'm not going to stop you. But if anything goes wrong, call me. Anything. If you need money, I can lend it to you." Maya looked like she was going to cry.

"Maya, it won't be for a little while, I don't think. I mean, how far along do I look?"

"About 4-5 months, I'd guess," Maya whispered. I dropped my mouth. "Look at your stomach. I thought you were just getting fat. I didn't want to mention it before."

"Let's get out of this dingy bathroom before someone hears us," I said. We walked quickly out of the mall, ignoring our surroundings. I didn't see the gorgeous guy from before looking at my retreating back.

xxxxxxxxxxxxx

Four days later I stopped being able to hold down food altogether. I only managed to keep it in as long as it took for me to go to the bathroom and throw up. I finally grew skinnier. Everywhere but where it counted. That grew, and my shrunken figure made it even more noticeable.

I was terrified out of my freaking mind. This was not supposed to happen. And it sure as hell wasn't supposed to happen this fast. It should have been months! Now I was sure this was unnatural, but what could I do? What could I do to make this slow down? What could I do to make this stop? To go back to whenever this happened to me (I had no idea) and stop it.

By the end of the week, I was down to my fuzziest, thickest sweatshirt. My mother was looking at me oddly, and my father shot her looks over my head when he thought I couldn't see.

What happened to glowing? I looked my worst ever. My hair, usually a shimmering blond, grew lank and sheen-less. My dark blue eyes had enormous bruises under them. I'd never appreciated what meager beauty I'd had until now. And I felt my first kick, hard and painful in my side. It wouldn't let up.

It was time.

I walked to Maya's house and knocked on the door. She opened it, took one look at me and started to scream. I clapped my hand over her mouth as quickly as I could. She looked at me, terrified.

"What the hell happened to you? There must be something wrong. This isn't supposed to be happening!" Maya shrieked once she'd let me inside and led me up to her room.

"I wish I knew," I sobbed. "I don't know what's happening to me. But at the rate this is going, I think all of this will be over in a few weeks. Maybe this thing is a mutant. I don't know. But it's hurting me, Maya." I lifted my shirt and showed her the few bruises that had blossomed there in the past day. "I haven't been able to eat either."

"Amanda, something is going horribly, horribly wrong. You need to tell your parents now. You need to go to a doctor, get some help. Please."

I shook my head. "I can't do that Maya. I can't do that to myself or my parents. I just can't. You've got to understand that. Please, just keep your promise. I'm leaving tonight."

"But you can't. Just wait a little longer. A few days won't make a difference."

"You last saw me a few days ago. You can't tell me it hasn't made a difference. Look at me." She winced, and I continued. "You have to see. I don't know if..." I faltered. _If I can survive this,_ I thought to myself.

"You're my best friend," Maya said, tears glistening in her eyes. "I should be stopping you."

"No, you shouldn't. Under normal circumstances you would, but I just have that feeling. I don't know if I'm going to make it. This thing is strong." At that moment, a hard kick came, right in my gut, and I leaned over, breathing hard.

"You don't even realize how brave and stupid you're being, do you?" Maya asked. She hugged me gently, as if aware of how delicate I had become.

"Yeah, I do. But I don't have another choice. My other option is going to hospital and being studied."

"Bye then," she whispered. "Remember to call me whenever you need anything."

I instantly agreed, and said goodbye to her quietly. We both pretended to ignore the tears going down the other's cheeks.

I snuck out of the house at two in the morning. All I had with me were a duffel bag with some loose clothing in it, and my life savings. I left behind my cell phone (it could be used to trace me), most of my clothes (they didn't fit), my parents, and my last hope, that this would all disappear magically and things would go back to the way they were.

I got into my old car Marv, and drove, knowing I would have to get rid of the car soon. It too, could be used to trace me.

It took me over two hours to get to New York City. I chose it for a simple reason. It was big. It would be easy to hide here. Just another pregnant teen runaway, roaming around with no place to go. The sight of the skyline didn't bring its usual excitement. I wasn't here for a shopping day trip, or a sight-seeing tour. I was here to escape.

The first place I went was a grocery store. It was about five in the morning, but I managed to find a place that was open. I knew that I wouldn't be able to force food down, but I had to try, or die sooner of starvation. The store clerk looked at me strangely. It was getting difficult for me to stand up, and I felt like I was going to fall down.

I walked outside the store and headed back to my locked car, but such a ferocious kick came my way that I felt something crack and a pain sharper than any I had felt before raged through me. So now it was breaking my bones. My legs gave out.

Here's the thing about the city. If a pregnant woman at home crashed to the sidewalk in agony, people would've immediately surrounded her and offered to take her to the hospital. Here, no one even glanced down. Well, some did out of curiosity, but they kept on walking. I pushed myself to get back up, and pulled myself into the car.

Screw getting rid of Marv. City traffic or no city traffic, tracing ability or no tracing ability, this was the only way to keep myself protected. Plus, although I knew it was stupid to grow attached to a car, but that's exactly what I'd done.

I clutched my ribs, wailing in agony. What had I ever done to deserve this? I couldn't just be a normal pregnant teen runaway? No, I had to have some kind of creepy monster growing inside of me. It was tearing me apart, piece by piece.

The pain continued, sharp as a needle. Over several hours it dulled, though, bit by excruciating bit. I felt very weak, but I managed push myself into a sitting position and start the car. I weaved in and out of the heavy traffic. Rush hour. What was with my luck these days?

I found an alleyway that seemed abandoned. The buildings on either side of it didn't seem inhabited, anyway. Marv was tiny, so he fit in when other cars would never be able to go. I figured I could lock the doors and sleep in the back seat. It wouldn't be comfortable, but I hadn't exactly signed on for comfort. In fact, this wasn't so bad.

Another punch from inside my stomach came. I'd spoken too soon.

"You know," I said, talking to my own distended stomach. "This really isn't the best way to go about forging a good relationship. I'm Amanda. What's your name?" No answer.

"Well, I guess you've pretty much just stolen my life. I had a future before you came in. The least you could do is try to be nice and not hurt me," I sobbed. Still no answer.

"I guess I could call you life, since you just replaced mine." Another kick came my way. I winced.

"Okay, that's not really very classy. I see why you don't like it. Isn't there some sort of synonym for life?" No answer. Then again, I didn't expect someone who wasn't born to start talking to me.

"Being? Essence? Vigor? Soul? Zest? Entity? Vitality?" I stopped. "How about Vitality? It kind of sounds like an actual name." Silence.

"I'm taking this lack of response to mean that Vitality is your name for the time being," I warned. Nothing happened. I grinned despite myself. I was slaphappy after getting no sleep at all. Now I was talking to an abnormal unborn kid who was beating me up like a pro wrestler.

I pushed the future completely out of my mind. I needed sleep, and I needed it now. Not even the intense fear coursing through my body could keep me awake.

I stretched out as much as I could in the back seat, which was still somewhat curled up, and fell asleep like I'd been knocked in the head, and not the ribs.


	6. Chapter 5

**Hello. Thanks all of you for tuning in. I have recently received my fourth review for the last chapter. I'm not complaining about that number, but how about we make three the bare minimum in order to receive another chapter? Sorry it's been taking a relatively long time to get this out to you guys, but there were a lot of plot line issues to think through. It's hard just spitting these things out. I honestly don't know how some of you do it. Enough of that, though. Let's ignore my rambling tendencies.**

I woke up to a faint sound of meowing outside. I brushed my tangled, and now somewhat unclean, hair out of my eyes and sat up with a groan. Yup. It still hurt. Like someone was repeatedly stabbing me in the side. My stomach rumbled and a wave of weakness swept over me, making me somewhat lightheaded. I hadn't been able to eat much in days.

A mangy cat was sitting on Marv's hood, peering in at me in the early morning light. He was a skinny gray tabby with bald patches dotting his coat and a ripped-up ear. My heart melted a bit. I always had had a soft spot for strays. I couldn't count the number of times I'd brought a cat or dog home, only to have my parents refuse to take them in.

I shook my head to clear it and crawled back into the driver's seat. "Hey kitty," I crooned. He blinked at me, revealing adorable green eyes. I rolled my window down. I needed air. It was late June and getting to be pretty freaking hot.

The cat jumped in the window, leaping over me and landing in the passenger seat. Great. He might very well have rabies or something. I hadn't meant to let him in. I had enough problems without possible rabies shots.

It was while I was freaking out internally that I felt something against my leg. The cat was rubbing against my thigh. I gasped and tried to sit very still. Then he started purring. He nudged my hand like he wanted me to pet him. I sighed and relaxed slightly. If he were rabid, wouldn't he have bitten me by now? Maybe he was a sweet family pet who just wanted some of the love he had lost. And maybe I was finally losing it from lack of food.

I raised my hand a few tentative inches. He slipped under my hand and walked across my legs. He then sat down in my lap like he belonged to me. There wasn't much room in my lap, granted, even with the seat slightly reclined, but he still managed to look comfortable.

I stroked along the length of his back, and his purring grew louder. I relaxed completely. He really did have the sweetest eyes. They made me forget about the raggedy condition of his coat and ear. This really was an exceptionally friendly cat. As a kid, when I'd found all those strays, I'd had to spend a lot of time coaxing them toward me with food before they'd ever let me touch them.

He rolled over onto his back and I noticed something that I hadn't before. There was a large cut on his stomach. I glanced at the passenger seat. There were a few drops of blood there that I hadn't noticed before. It was probably on my legs too. That was just great.

"Poor kitty," I murmured. "What happened to you?" I bent over him to examine the wound more closely. It probably needed stitches at least. I could drive him to the nearest animal rescue. It was hard to believe that he was still so sweet-natured when it looked like he was in pain.

My stomach grumbled louder. "Not now Vitality," I muttered. Damn kid was going to have to wait. I was just as hungry as it was.

I took a deep breath to steady my head and caught the most enticing scent. My mouth started watering and my stomach growled louder. I couldn't figure out where it was coming from. Then it hit me, and I couldn't stop myself.

I seized the cat and brought my mouth up to the cut. He hissed and I grabbed his neck, shutting him up. I ignored the scratches my arms and face were getting. I drank deeply, enough to more than fill my empty stomach. It tasted wonderful, ambrosia after nearly starving. The scratching stopped.

My consciousness slammed back into my brain. I yanked my mouth away and cradled the corpse in my arms, tears running down my cheeks. How could I? What was happening to me? He was such a sweetheart, too. I gagged, but didn't throw up. Something in me stopped myself from retching. It had tasted too good.

I shuddered. I felt very full, and even though I'd just woken up, very tired. I tossed the poor cat out the window, wincing. This was horrible and disgusting. I'd eaten hamburger more times in my life than I could count, but I'd never killed the cow or had any closeness to it. If this was the circle of life, then I wanted to be a vegetarian.

I didn't have the arm strength at the moment to return to the back seat. I just wanted to go home, curl up in my bed, and have my overprotective mother tuck me in. Instead, I just rolled the window back up and reclined the seat some more. I felt a gentle nudge inside me, as opposed to the harsh wallops I'd been getting.

"Yeah, I'm glad _you're_ happy," I said, as I closed my eyes and fell asleep.

I woke up again several hours later. I didn't know what time it was, only that the sun was somewhere above the roof of the car. Late morning to early afternoon. I arched my back slightly, moving the pressure the little kick boxer was making on my back. I blinked groggily.

"Wh-what is it?" I asked stupidly, imagining for a moment that I was still at home. I could only wish. Then my memory came back and I almost heaved again. Something subconsciously stopped my gag reflex once more though. I felt different altogether, slightly less weak than before. I still wasn't up to walking. Ever since my spill in the street after Vitality had broken my freaking rib, I had lacked the energy to do more than crawl.

Maybe that... No it couldn't be. It was an insane thought. No way in hell was my unusual alertness due to blood. This was not an f-ing sci-fi movie. That just didn't happen. Ever. End of story. There was that weird disease where people thought they were vampires: clinical, chronic something-or-other. There were vampire bats. There were mosquitoes. That was it.

But then why was everything else about this kid abnormal? It grew way too fast, made me sick all the time, and was stronger than I was. Was blood really all that far out? Vitality didn't take to regular food. Maybe the blood was nourishing it, and me in turn. Or maybe one of the odd pregnancy side effects was insanity.

Either way, I couldn't stay here. It was going to really stink in a few days, as much as I hated to think about it, and I couldn't bear to stay anyway. I was going to really go insane if I had to look at my victim's corpse. And it was probably best that I keep moving.

And what was more, I had a serious problem. I really had to go to the bathroom. I could only hold it for so long, what with the thing sitting on my bladder. And it hurt. It hurt really badly.

I grabbed my bag and rifled through it. Nothing, just clothes. Then I decided to check the side pockets just in case there was something useful in there. I didn't know what I expected to find. I knew I didn't have a toilet in the bag.

My hand found something that felt somewhat squishy, and seemed to be covered in a thin layer of plastic. I pulled it out of the side pocket of the duffel. A packet of tissues. I groaned. It was better than nothing.

A few short minutes later I was pulling out of the small crammed space. Then I got hit with an alarming flashback from Drivers Ed. I remembered with a start that I was actually breaking the law. There was some sort of law against people under the age of twenty-something driving in NYC. I wasn't sure exactly when the cut-off age was, but I knew I hadn't reached it.

Now there was no way I could stay here. With my luck, I'd get caught in the next few hours. Then I'd be shipped back home, where my mother would freak out and send me to the hospital, where I'd get dissected. Nice. There was absolutely no way.

So I'd go to another town. There were twenty-four hour parking lots out there. Lots of people stayed in those. Or was that just an urban legend? Maybe if it was a busy one no one would notice. Or not. I had to try.

I drove, strumming my fingers nervously on the steering wheel. I knew that even if I technically was allowed to be driving here, I'd still be in serious trouble for being a teen runaway. It didn't help with the sudden onslaught of nerves that had come upon me.

"Oof!" Totally didn't see that one coming. "Good morning to you too, Vitality," I said facetiously. "Can we find some other way of communicating besides violence?" The beating up didn't help the nerves much either. Honestly, I felt like a kid just past her sixteenth birthday, learning to drive. Any confidence that I'd built up over the months since had gone out the window.

I kept driving and tried to look older. Old enough to be driving and not be in school. Turns out that nearly starving is pretty good for that. My gaunt face looked older than seventeen, any childhood chubbiness left in my cheeks had long gone. Neither did I look that healthy, though. I did not want to know what my hair looked like. My eyes had horrible circles under them. And now, away from such civilized things as a sink, I was starting to break out. Or maybe that was just stress.

It definitely took a while. Why did I go to the biggest city in the country again? Oh, right, to blend. _Nice job with that, cat murderer._ Once I was out I was relieved beyond belief. Now I was off to the biggest, busiest suburb I could find.

I didn't want to drive around anymore. Even the simple action of putting my foot on the pedals wore me out a little. It majorly sucked. I mean, I was never the energizer bunny, but I was a kid, I had my fair dose of energy. Now I felt like I'd aged fifty years at least. Even blood sounded good right now.

"Where did that come from?" I exclaimed out loud. That was so not even conceivable. I was a human. Humans do not partake in blood. Well, uncooked blood. There had to be some blood in meat, right? Or did it evaporate once it was cooked? Well the water in it might, but the solids that mainly made it up were going to be left behind. I was giving myself a brain-ache.

The hours behind the wheel seemed to drag as I drove south, away from Connecticut, my town, and my family. And any chance I had of having a normal life. Then again, that had flown out the window when I'd gotten pregnant, whenever that had been. Ugh! How could I, one of the least slut-like people ever, have just sounded like a slut. Only a slut wouldn't know where or by whom a kid was conceived.

But what would be the outcome of all of this? The pregnancy wasn't like a regular one, what would make me think the outcome would be anywhere near normal? I knew I'd told Maya that I might die... I really didn't want to die. Who knew if I would anyway? I just had been really worked up at that moment. I had to stay positive. I could very well live until I was one hundred. I could die a little old lady in my sleep, my only regret being that I never saw Vitality grow up.

But since when had I been attached to the little bugger? Well, emotionally attached. I was pretty sure I was physically attached already. It made absolutely no sense, as this thing was taking my chances at normalcy and beating them into a bloody pulp along with my insides. And yet, there was an unmistakable feeling of sympathy, and maybe even affection for the thing inside me. I didn't seem to have that really strong bond all mothers say they instantly feel, but maybe that would make it easier to give Vitality away, if I got to give it away.

_It._ Well it wasn't like I was going to go to an ultrasound and check the gender of the flipping thing, now was I? Boo to those parents who wanted surprises. At least they had the choice.

My mind kept racing far faster than my weakened body would ever be able to keep up with. Right when it seemed that both were going to give out if I drove one more mile, I saw a big twenty-four hour Walmart. I quickly put on my turn signal and pulled into it.

"Well, when life hands you a cliche," I muttered to myself. It was starting to get dark out, the sun just setting behind the horizon. I had driven through Pennsylvania and was now somewhere in Maryland, or at least, I thought so. I hadn't been paying enough attention to know where. Honestly, it had been a miracle that I'd been able to focus enough to avoid any crashes, though I was getting a fairly good tolerance for pain, what with Vitality deciding it would be a good idea to hit me every so often.

I settled back and decided to try to enjoy the sunset. The beautiful summer colors made tie-dye patterns to the west and the small amount of light left was enough to set off the colors to their best advantage. Crimson, pink, blue, and orange all banded together to create a sight that I'd usually been too busy to fully appreciate before.

When the last bit of sun had disappeared, I opened my door to try to catch a breeze. I hadn't wanted to move before, it seemed almost disrespectful to the sunset. I ran my fingers through my hair, trying to get it off of my neck, and closed my eyes. It didn't smell like the city, of smog and garbage. In fact, it almost smelled like the crisp, country-like scent of home. I breathed deeply to add dimension to my memories, memories I'd never thought I'd cherish.

I started to close the door, carefully, as Marv was probably going to fall apart with any rough handling, but it stopped when it was almost shut, like there was something in the way. I looked down.

A huge bottle of red liquid was sitting next to the drivers' entrance to my car. And just when I thought things couldn't get any weirder.


	7. Chapter 6

**And again with the completely useless authors' notes. They don't serve much of a purpose unless there really is something to say, but I figure that if people don't want to hear it, they can just skip the part written in bold. As I write this, there are three reviews up for the last chapter of Vitality, which is really no more than I expected for a short period of time and an "out there" story like this. People would rather read about two characters who have the names Edward and Bella. Especially if it involves a lot of over-the-top romance. Or possibly some nice werewolf love (mine certainly seemed well-recieved). So I'd like to thank each of you who take the time to read something that doesn't have an in-depth description of how hot Edward is. Let's hit the story.**

Creepy things were going on here. It wasn't just me that was weird. It couldn't be just me. If it was, then who'd put the blood (and I was positive it was blood) next to me? And how could I not have heard them? I was ninety nine percent sure it hadn't come because of some new weird thing I had going on, like teleportational powers. Those would be too good to be true. Nothing that had happened to me so far was at all good.

It was surprisingly difficult to pull the bottle up and onto the passenger seat. Well, not so surprising, once I figured that I had never had much upper body strength _before _the creepy loss of all energy. I could barely bend down to get it. It was only my desire to get the stuff out of other people's sight that powered my struggle against gravity. That and an overwhelming urge that I couldn't control. Maybe it would help again. Maybe.

I slammed the door and opened the bottle, which was about the same size as a two liter soda bottle. In fact, the Coca Cola brand label was on the cap. I sniffed its contents. It smelled... good. Better than the cat had smelled. And I hadn't had anything since then.

I tilted the bottle slightly and tasted its contents with the tip of my tongue. I had never realized how something could be so terrible and so amazing at the same time. My mind was rebelling against it, repelled by even the thought of blood. I was never exactly queasy, but I would never have put it near my mouth before. But all my senses and instincts were telling me to was the type of internal battle you only see on really bad late-night television.

_I'll just try a little,_ I thought to myself. _There's nothing forcing me, and I can always stop._ I tilted the bottle slightly more. A flow of warm blood trickled into my mouth. It was funny, it sort of tasted like blood had before, when I'd bitten my tongue or sucked a paper cut. It was still salty and had that slightly metallic flavor, but I'd never remembered it being so sweet and satisfying.

_Some women crave barbecue sauce, others crave pickles. Talk about your weird pregnancy cravings._

I filled my stomach and then set the bottle aside, the top third of it gone. I thought about just leaving it on the passenger seat, but I was paranoid. I had a right to be. Seeing a pregnant girl sitting alone in a car was suspicious enough. Seeing her with an almost-full bottle of an unidentified red substance just reeked of occult circumstances. No way could I let that happen.

I was dead tired. Again. Still I managed to grab my bag and throw it over the bottle. Fatigue. A normal symptom for once. I leaned back in the seat.

"Night, Vitality," I muttered. "Oh, and if you break my bones again, I will be very mad." A sharp jolt in my stomach made me wince. _So much for that._

I shifted my weight and tried to get more comfortable. I somehow couldn't. My body was comfortable, but there was something in my mind, like an itch I couldn't scratch. I just couldn't leave alone that I'd left behind my mother, father, and best friend for someone I didn't know. It was a horrible feeling, that I'd betrayed them. I wanted so badly to see them again, or to just hear their voices. Any one of them. My constantly harried mother, my father who thought he was funny, Maya who knew me as well as anyone ever could.

I was bothered by this for hours, my mind racing while my body ached from tiredness. I cried a bit, not bothering to wipe the tears away. I didn't care. Who would see me that would care the least bit?

I finally fell asleep. It was sudden, and I didn't remember ever feeling sleep start to fall over me. Nor did I recall any of my dreams. All I knew was that they must not have been very pleasant, because I woke with a start, gasping, the next morning. I jumped when I heard a noise outside the car.

I turned my head. There was a sweet-looking old lady standing by my window. She looked like the type who would spoil her grandchildren rotten, bake cookies, and go to church every Sunday. It made me miss mine with a pang. I had one living grandmother, and she lived all the way out in Wisconsin, so I didn't get to see her often.

I put the key in the ignition so I could roll the window down a crack.

"Yes?" I asked, my voice hoarse, my throat dry.

"What are you doing out here all alone?" she asked, sounding worried. A rush of gratitude swept through me. There were still those who cared about complete strangers out there.

"I...um...um." Was there an acceptable way to answer this question?

She looked at me sympathetically.

"I can't really go home right now," I finished. The rest she could think to herself. Maybe I was the victim of a broken home. Maybe I was some random slut who'd gotten herself pregnant. Maybe I'd just panicked and run away. I hoped she thought I was older than I actually was.

"Do you need to call anyone?" she asked. She looked suspicious, but she still had the kindly air about her.

I thought. Did I need to call anyone? No. Plus, I shouldn't. Did I want to call anyone? Yes. I wanted to call my mom and have her come pick me up. Was there anyone I could call? Yes. I could call Maya. Maya already knew stuff. Maya was trustworthy. Maya was my friend.

"Thank you," I said. She handed me a very old cell phone through the open window. "I'll keep it short."

"No need. I don't have anywhere I need to be," she simply said.

I started to dial and then stopped. "Wait," I said. "What town is this?"

"Hagerstown," she answered. Hmm. I had definitely heard that before. Where, though?

I continued dialing. Maya's number, my parents numbers, and my home number were the only ones I had ever bothered to memorize. Anything else was in my contacts list.

"Hello?" I almost broke down hearing her voice. It was familiar. I hadn't had anything feel familiar in what was only a few days, but what felt like a lifetime.

"Maya. It's me."

"Amanda! What's going on? Are you in trouble? Where are you? What's wrong? Do you need me to come down there?"

"It's okay. I'm in Hagerstown, Maryland. I'm not in any big trouble. You don't need to come down here."

"Thank God!" she practically shrieked. "And wasn't that a place with some Civil War battle?" That was why it had sounded so familiar! Thank you U.S. History.

"Yeah, I guess so. I just couldn't bring my phone and didn't know when I'd be able to call again."

"Are you... any different?" she asked tentatively.

I looked down at my protruding belly. It was straining against my shirt and it wasn't pretty.

"Yeah. I look about ready to pop," I said. "I think it accelerated or something."

"And you're okay, otherwise?"

_Except for a broken rib and a newfound appetite for the incredibly gory. _Could I tell her about this? Probably. Could I tell her in front of this sweet lady who'd let me borrow her phone? Definitely not.

"Some changes. I can't really tell you now though."

"Are you kidding me? You have to tell me what's happening. Everything."

"Maya, I'm in the parking lot of a Wal Mart. I can't tell you everything. I just can't."

I heard her sigh. "I get it. Just don't do anything stupid."

"I think I've been stupid enough for one lifetime, thanks," I answered. "I better go."

"Okay," Maya said.

"Thank you."

"I'm not doing anything for you that you wouldn't do for me."

"So, bye."

"Bye," she said wistfully. I pressed the _end call_ button quickly. I couldn't tease myself with calls home. It would only be worse for me.

I handed the phone back to the lady on the other side of Marv's door. She'd done an admirable job of pretending she couldn't hear me.

"Thank you so much!" I exclaimed. "I'm so sorry for wasting your time. If there's anything I can do..." Who was I kidding? I couldn't even sit up straight. I wasn't going to be helping little old ladies cross the street.

"It's alright dear." She looked down sadly at my stomach area. "I'll pray for you."

I nodded slightly, my eyes growing a bit wet. I didn't know what I believed. My parents called themselves Christians. I'd been baptized. Still, we went to church on Christmas and Easter, and sometimes we skipped it. I wasn't the most religious person ever. I didn't feel comfortable praying to someone I wasn't entirely sure of. It made me feel better to know that someone who was could pray in my stead.

"I can't even tell you how much this means to me," I said earnestly.

"Me? I've done nothing. A quick phone call, that was all it was. Save your thank you's for someone who has truly earned them." She walked off with a toss of her coiffed silver hair, leaving behind the sweet scent of old lady perfume.

Once she was out of sight I completely broke down. I thought I'd missed everyone before. The phone call had intensified and sharpened every feeling inside of me until I thought my inner organs would be shredded. Well if my emotions didn't do the job, Vitality certainly would.

I cried harder. The mention of God had made me remember my own mortality. I'd watched enough doctors show and health channel specials. That kid hit one of my vital organs too hard and I was toast. Burnt, scraped, and tossed out toast.

And why did Vitality get to have that power? That thing wasn't even a real person, I didn't think. Craving blood, growing like a weed, beating me around. This wasn't normal! This wasn't even abnormal. This was so far beyond either of them.

I wept harder and harder. I stayed like that for hours, and once I'd run out of tears, I'd sniffle once in a while. At last, I finally stopped. What would feeling sorry for myself do? _Make me feel better. _But did I feel better after my little episode. _Not at all._ I had a headache from crying so hard, my eyes were dry, and I had a stomachache. Most likely from dehydration.

I snatched the bottled blood out from under my bag. I started to drink. The hot summer day had kept it at a comfortable temperature, and it helped more than the crying had. It flowed down my throat, off to go join my own blood in the circulatory system. It was refreshing, sweet, salty, soothing.

I finished the entire bottle in one go and felt slightly sloshy. With every slight movement I made, I could feel liquid moving with me. I was surprised there was even enough room to put that much liquid. I was kind of short and petite. There wasn't that much space in there. I figured Vitality was taking up pretty much all the room my stomach had to offer. Apparently not.

I don't know what I did for the next few hours. It was a similar feeling to that I got when I ate too much at Thanksgiving. A food coma. I spaced in and out, thinking odd, abstract thoughts. It was the oddest sensation I had ever experienced. I was detached. Vitality didn't exist. This Wal Mart didn't exist. Danger didn't exist. Even I didn't exist. Nothing mattered. I had never felt so free.

I wasn't happy. I was beyond emotion. I felt a bit numb. It would have been scary if I'd been able to feel anything, but there was nothing.

Slowly, agonizingly slowly, reality came back to me. I was conscious of the cars rushing down the street. Next I was again aware of myself, my predicament, my damn baby. It sucked, coming down from that. I would've cried, but my eyes were still kind of dry.

A car parked next to mine. That wasn't unusual. This was a store. People came and went. I didn't even bother looking at it. There was no point.

"Amanda!" I heard a shriek. I knew that shriek anywhere. I yanked my door open.

"You found me!" I exclaimed stupidly.

"Of course I did. How many Wal Marts does one town need?" Maya rolled her brown eyes.

"Right." I'd told her exactly where I was. _Nice going, nimrod. _"You shouldn't be here."

"Neither should you, but if you think I'm leaving you alone, you have another think coming. I felt awful letting you leave on your own. I'm staying right here."

"But..."

"Don't even think about it, Amanda Martin. This is up to me. I'm staying. End of story."

"Maya, you can't just..."

"Yes, I can. You did. I'm good. If my parents want to do something about that, well they'll know I'm taking care of you."

"I don't need to be taken care of!"

"Prove it," she said, leaning against her car. She tossed her head defiantly.

"I can't really move much," I muttered. "It hurts to walk. I'm 99.8% sure I have a broken rib. My legs are exhausted just from driving yesterday."

"My point exactly," Maya said, after shaking off her alarmed look and coming closed to me, as if prepared to shield me from something. "You can't just be alone. I'm going to help you move into the back seat."

No amount of talking to could stop her. Not even when I mentioned that I weighed about ten pounds more than her _before_ getting huge. She supported the vast majority of my weight, being careful not to touch my ribcage. I had no idea how she did it. Hmm, I'd seen that documentary on adrenaline and its effects on the human body and how it was able to do much more than usual. That would account for her unexpected strength.

I was able to stretch out for the first time in days. It felt wonderful beyond all belief. Maya nodded like she was finally satisfied and turned to get into the driver's seat. On her way she stumbled. She bent down to pick something up.

"Amanda, what the hell is this?" she demanded, holding up a bottle filled to the top with red blood.

I groaned to myself. Now I'd have to tell her.

"Listen, Maya. You're never going to believe this..."


	8. Chapter 7

**Hello again, readers. I know it's been a really long wait, but you can't really blame me. Well you could, but it wouldn't get you anywhere. I swear, it's like pulling teeth to get reviews out of you guys. Love you anyway, because you're still reading it. Have a cyber-cupcake. **

I was right. She wasn't going to believe it. She didn't, in fact, until I made her smell the contents of the bottle.

"You're kidding me," she said.

"I swear I'm not. I'll drink some of it if I have to to prove it to you."

"That's just sick. I don't want to have to watch that!" she insisted.

"Well it's happening! I sure as heck don't want it to be, but it's happening, and I thought we'd gone over that this _isn't _normal."

"There's a difference between not normal and just plain disturbing."

"How is blood drinking is so different from hyper-fast growth."

"Did you honestly just ask that question?" She tapped her fingers against the bottle cap.

"Okay, so it's creepy. I'm sorry I'm such a freak!" My eyes started to tear up, and I looked down.

"You're not the freak, you're the victim," Maya insisted, turning around even farther so that her long arm could touch mine. I appreciated the effort, but it wasn't going to make me feel better at this point.

"No, I'm the freak. Just look at me!"

"You're not sprouting fangs, you know. You just look like the living dead."

"Thanks for that," I sniffed.

"Any time." She turned to the side, putting her legs over the dashboard to rest on the passenger seat. She still didn't really fit, but now she wasn't going to break her neck trying to turn around to face me. "So what else is going on? You promised me the gory details."

"Hardee har har," I said sarcastically. "And apart from the broken bone and the newfound taste for that which is gross, nothing else major has rocked the world as we know it."

"Amanda, your parents are going insane. There's probably a team of private investigators out there looking for you."

"Then it's a good thing this car doesn't have an internal tracker thingy."

"Yeah, I guess so. But is this all really worth trying to save face?"

"Well one way or another, pretty soon this whole thing's going to be over."

"Yeah, you said that earlier. But do you really think it could..."

"It could beat The Rock in an arm wrestling contest. Yeah, I'm pretty sure it could. But since you're secretly a paramedic, there's nothing to worry about here. So I'm glad you could _take care of me._"

"Hey, that's not fair. You were stuck in the front seat of your car outside a Wal Mart. Maybe I'm going nuts here, but you seemed like you could use a little help."

"And now I'm in the back seat of my car outside a Wal Mart. There's an upgrade."

"I'm doing what I can here. At least I'm not fighting off people who're trying!" She didn't look like she was going to back down.

"I know. I'm sorry. I just..."

"I get it," she said, trying to spare me from trying to put my feelings into words.

"That's the thing, you don't. You have no idea. No idea how it feels to wake up one morning and not know when or if you'll ever be able to go back to having a normal life. It sucks."

She just nodded, presumably not knowing how to agree with my words without me jumping down her throat again. It wasn't her fault. I'd been without human contact, and I was dumping my emotions all over her. She wouldn't wish any of this on me.

"Pass the goddamn blood," I said.

She snorted. I looked at her pointedly and she shut up. Then she just about burst into giggles.

"I was serious, you know," I insisted. "I wasn't kidding about this."

"I know," she gasped. "It was just the way you said it." She passed the very full, very red bottle to me. I gulped down a few mouthfuls and then looked to see how she was holding up. Her laughter had stopped abruptly, more than likely it had been born out of shock, not actual humor. She met my eyes.

"It's okay. I just drove almost all day to get here. Without a GPS. You think I'm going to run away screaming?"

"No. But you should be doing something. Just watching me drink the stuff is making me feel like I'm some sort of horror show."

"You see any better entertainment?" she joked. That was Maya. Making jokes in even the worst of times.

"Well we could hook up an ultrasound and see if Vitality's any more entertaining." I set the blood aside.

"Vitality?" Maya looked confused.

"Oh right. Sort of what I'm calling this thing." I gestured toward my stomach area in a show of nonchalance.

"Amanda, has this stuff done something to your head? _Vitality?_"

"It's that bad?" I asked.

"Well it kind of sounds like a girl's name, I guess. You better hope it's not a boy in there."

"It doesn't matter if it's a camel in there! No one's actually going to call it by this name!"

"So if you..."

"Drop it off at the nearest hospital. They don't ask any questions... I don't think."

"That's not going to happen, you know. You're tough." Maya forced a smile.

"Vitality's tougher." Simple. Two words. It felt like a whole paragraph.

"Come on. Would you at least pretend to think positively?"

"No. What's the point?"

"That's my point. Thinking positively has been known to make people a lot healthier," she said. I sighed and rolled my eyes. Positive, optimistic, glass-half-full thinking. Oye.

"Fine." I had barely gotten the words out before something sharply cracked into my ribcage. I gave a small shriek, and gritted my teeth together to keep from screaming in pain.

"Amanda!" Maya had leapt from her seat in the front of my car, banging her head in the process, and rushed out of the car to open the door near my head. "What happened?"

"Rib," spat out through clenched teeth. My hands were is fists, my body's natural defense against pain. The tension helped by spreading out the pain, but it still hurt like a...... well, I'm not going to swear too heavily, but how about we just substitute in the worst words we can think of? Maya touched me lightly on the forehead.

"Is there anything I can do?" she asked worriedly.

"Let me be an f-ing pessimist!" I cried out. "Now get back in the car before we attract somebody's attention." She scrambled back into her odd perch with the stretched-out legs.

"I am so sorry," she started gushing. "If there's anything I can do..." I took several shallow breaths, trying hard not to disrupt my rib cage.

"Number one: it isn't your fault. Number two: if this is taking care of me, I want a second opinion, because it doesn't hurt any less." I was mean, I knew it. I was on the very edge of things I could take right now.

Maya looked almost ashamed. I felt extremely guilty, but it kind of hurt to talk. Somehow the sharp pain in the recent cracked rib had flamed up the pain of the first one. And my entire abdomen ached from the bruises. I did the only thing I could at the moment. I snatched that bottle of blood and I drank, slowly so that I wouldn't have to move anything, but deeply. It somehow seemed to ease the pain.

Maya just looked at me with an almost maternal concern in her face. My freakishly tall friend wasn't really the type you saw as the maternal friend, more the jokey, brighten-up-your-day friend. But she'd switched hats as easily as if she was the motherly one in the first place, which was sort of ironic, considering my current state of being.

Hours passed slowly, like the someone whose job it was to pull us through time had become lazy. After what seemed like an eternity, Maya fell asleep. Her snoring was a familiar sound, as we'd been having sleepovers for years. She usually fell asleep before I did, so I'd heard a lot of snoring. I wasn't in the most comfortable position, but I wasn't going to move and risk any further pain.

"Appreciate it, Vitality," I muttered. I fell asleep shortly afterward.

The next morning I woke up still bleary-eyed, wondering why my neck didn't ache like it had for the past few nights from sleeping upright. Then I remembered. I was in the back seat. I was lying down, somewhat curled up, true, but lying down. Maya was here.

She was in the front seat, eating a yogurt, the receipt and a bulging bag next to her.

"I see you're taking advantage of the local resources," I commented. She choked on her breakfast in surprise and looked toward me.

"I see you're in a better mood."

"For now. Unless Vitality wants to do something else to me."

"I pity the kid's adoptive parents. He, she, whatever is going to be a real handful."

"No kidding. Do you have anything you care to share?"

"I thought you couldn't keep food down." Maya looked confused.

"I feel kind of hungry. And if I can't, I'll puke in the bag."

"Gross!"

"Just being honest here. I think I can. Any yogurt?" I asked. She passed me a cup and a plastic spoon.

"Go nuts."

I wolfed it down. This was hardly solid food, but it felt so nice to not have to drink everything. Sure, blood tasted great, but it was nothing but liquid, really. I tossed it aside.

"Told you so," I said to Maya.

"Have a bag, just in case you toss your cookies," she said. She tossed it back to me. I caught it just in time to have an enormous pressure erupt right against my stomach. I heaved into the plastic bag, the vomit more blood than anything else.

"Oh my God! Are you okay? I knew you shouldn't have had anything to eat!"

I wasn't paying attention. I clutched my stomach. Pain started coming in and quickly grew, until there was no way I could contain it. I screamed. And when I say screamed, I mean that all of the pain inside me, which was substantial, felt like it was resonating through my throat. I'd once gotten a really deep cut in my arm that has needed stitches. This felt somewhat like that, except a million times more painful.

"Get out of here! Drive!" I yelled. I then couldn't say anymore. Wordless shrieks and cries erupted from my mouth as Maya swung her feet around and drove at a speed that might not be considered legal out of the parking lot and onto the highway. We kept driving for what seemed like an eternity through the pain. I was being cut in half, I knew I was. There was something inside me that was tearing me apart. It dawned on me what was happening. And it wasn't normal.

I screamed. Was normal childbirth as painful as this? I didn't know, never would know. I was dying, being ripped apart from the inside, and there was nothing I could do to stop it. This was my own unborn child doing this to me. My Vitality.


	9. Chapter 8

**Hey! What's up darling readers? I know I said I'd try to update as soon as my three reviews were in, but they all arrived after less than 24 hours, so I'm not going to be strictly on time. Sorry about that. Plus, I've done the update every day thing and it really takes a lot out of you. Mentally, that is, though my hands did get pretty agile at typing. Oh, and just to let you know how into this story I am getting, while I wrote the argument in the last chapter between Amanda and Maya, I started an argument without even realizing it while IMing my friend. It's a terribly good thing I'm incapable of holding a grudge. **

**Maya P.o.V.**

I was never a terribly good driver. I failed the test about three times before I got my license, and I still had trouble focusing on the road sometimes. I'd never had as much difficulty as right now, though. Amanda was shrieking in her pain, regurgitated blood spilled on her from when she'd dropped the plastic bag.

Amanda and I were as close friends as I'd ever seen. She was very down to earth, fun-loving, hardworking, funny, caring. But all of that seemed to disappear from her face. All I could see there was agony. All of her features were distorted, her normally pretty face grotesque.

She'd never believed she was pretty. No matter how many times she heard how many people would kill for her deep, ocean blue eyes and blond hair. No matter how many times she heard she had a gorgeous smile, or nice nose, she ignored it. Now she was right, as much as it hurt me to see it.

I tried my very hardest to keep my concentration on the road. It was hard. Damn hard. I got off at the first promising exit I saw, which ended up being to the middle of nowhere. Perfect. I came to what looked like (and what I prayed was) a deserted field. I parked quickly and dashed around to yank Amanda's door open. She was still screaming, but when she saw me there, she gritted her teeth to try to hold in whatever was going on inside her.

"What's happening?" I asked. "Do you feel contractions?" She shook her head in a gesture that was nearly imperceptible.

"I don't think so," she breathed. "It feels like something's clawing me apart."

"Don't you think you should have your pants off for when it comes?" All I could think of were those stupid doctor shows that are always on. _Scrubs. Gray's Anatomy. House. ER._ I just couldn't think straight.

"I don't feel like it's coming out... that way," she said softly. I winced.

"You don't mean..."

"Yes, I do. Go away. You don't have to watch this. You shouldn't."

"And you shouldn't have to keep quiet. Go ahead, you don't have to worry about me. You can make noise. It doesn't matter," I insisted. She yanked her shirt up, exposing her swollen stomach dotted with ugly bruises. She trailed her fingers over it, studiously ignoring any pain or discomfort. I was amazed at her strength. She ought to be shrieking right now. My heart went out to her.

"Go. Now."

"I'm not going anywhere."

"Yes, you are."

"If you were well enough to even consider getting up and making me, I'd leave. But I came, and I'm here, and I'm staying. End of discussion." I smoothed her hair back from her forehead and collected it into a ponytail with the elastic on my wrist. I gripped her small hand with my unattractively large one.

"You're being stupid."

"Whatever. Just squeeze my hand. Don't even worry about my circulation. You're what's important." She shot me a pitiful look from her position in the back seat of her car, Marv, which I'd always thought crazy to name the thing. She really did have a gift with names.

She looked so miserable. There was something about her that almost seemed child-like at this moment. She was utterly defenseless. She needed me just as much as a child needs its mother. But I could do nothing. I was powerless. I couldn't help her, I couldn't even alleviate her pain.

A low groan came from her throat, and it somehow sounded even worse than the bloodcurdling screams from earlier. I started panicking, though I tried hard to keep my appearance calm.

Her hand went limp in mine. Freaking out beyond belief, I searched fumblingly for her pulse. I found it, weak but steady. Maybe she'd fainted or gone into shock or something. There was only so much pain the human body could take while conscious, right? Right? I had no clue.

For the next hour nothing happened. It seemed like I was continuously feeling for a pulse in Amanda's wrist. You know how they always talked to you in school about the "fight or flight response of stress" and the side effects it could cause? I was experiencing every single one of them. Goosebumps, headache, breathlessness, nausea, anxiety, increased heart rate. Except, unlike those people who used these to lift cars or outrun villains, I had to lean over my best friend and make sure she was still alive.

Amanda's eyelids fluttered open. She looked confused for a moment, then pained. More than pained, she looked to be in positive agony.

"Maya..." she choked.

"What's wrong? What's happening?"

"Help me. Vitality," she gasped. I never did know whether she was asking Vitality for help, or help from me with Vitality. Later, I decided that it was better I didn't know.

Her eyes locked on mine, the color brighter than I'd ever seen it. Then they squeezed shut.

A fountain of blood erupted from her torso. I cringed, and despite the promises I had made, I turned around and threw up everything that I had in my stomach. I simply couldn't look at it and keep my gag reflex from acting up. All those hospital television shows lied.

I collapsed on my side when my stomach was empty and my mouth sour with bile. I dragged myself back up and peered cautiously into the car.

I wished I hadn't. The blood was everywhere. I slowly moved my eyes to look at Amanda. She was lying down limply, in the same position I'd left her in, legs curled in slightly, eyes shut, mouth pressed together. But everything was different.

I screamed. And then I screamed some more, because a gaping, messy wound was in her stomach, and lying on her chest was a small figure.

I tentatively reached out to Amanda, knowing deep down what'd happened, but refusing to accept it.

She felt warm, but when I moved my hand across her face, I felt no breath there. And when I laid my finger against her neck to feel for a pulse, try as I might, there was nothing there. Nothing when I felt her wrist. Nothing when I felt her heart.

It hadn't sunk in. Then all of a sudden it did and I couldn't contain it. I felt both full and empty at the same time, heavy, weighted down. My eyes felt oddly wet, so I let go of control and sobbed. I sobbed for the unfairness. I wept for me. I bawled for Amanda's parents. I wailed for Amanda. And I cried for the tiny little shape covered in Amanda's blood, who would never know her.

I was curled up in a ball, clutching my knees, getting rid of every single bit of surplus water I had. And it seemed to help. Now I didn't feel full at all, just empty. Hollow as a drum.

As if in a trance, I got to my feet, and scooped the tiny thing up, subconsciously hearing my mother's voice, _Support its head!_

I used the end of my shirt, and started wiping it off. It was a she. I could tell that right away. The tears that I thought I couldn't produce came spilling slowly down my cheeks at the realization.

Dimly, I noted more things about this baby as I held it. Her. She was absolutely stunning. Amanda was pretty, and so were both her parents, but neither came close to touching this infant. Her eyes were closed, but she was breathing steadily. Her hair looked to be a very light brown verging on blond. I edged my hand closer to her face to clean it off.

Her eyes snapped open. Bright blue. Just like Amanda's. The kind most people would think were fake. Her tiny little mouth opened, revealing a full set of teeth that clamped down on my hand.

It took a moment for the pain to register, and even then it didn't make much impact on me. It didn't even compare to my emotional pain. I tried to wedge my hand out from between her jaws but it was stuck. I gave up. There was no point. What did it matter if I lived or died now? I could go at any time. Amanda was proof.

"She's strong," commented a low, deep voice behind me. I froze.

"W-w-what? Wh-ho?" I stuttered. I slowly turned around.

It was the most beautiful person I had ever seen in my entire life. Brown hair, the sun reflecting magnificently off of it. He was about two inches taller than me, but then, I was freakishly tall. He'd probably seem tall to most girls. I would've admired him any other day, but all I felt was numbness. Still, he seemed familiar. Then I saw his eyes. Bright, crimson red.

"Call me Everett," he said casually.

"But... but why?" I didn't even make sense to myself anymore.

"Am I here, you mean? Yes, you must be confused. Oh, and the child is making you lose blood. That can't be helping any."

I simply blinked at him. What in the hell was he doing? Though the world did seem to be getting farther away. I welcomed it. It felt amazing. Relief, at last.

"I'll take her. You appear to be getting faint. I do believe she's taken too much blood from you for your own health. Be grateful she's too small to kill you." He moved closer and took Vitality from my arms, making her release my hand at the same time. It dawned on me what he was doing.

"Give her back! Who do you think you are? You can't just..." Amanda had gone through too much to have Vitality taken.

"I believe I am her father, and have more right than you to be holding her," he said snottily. I stayed still. Very still. All the emptiness and sadness inside me instantly turned into full-on rage. I charged at him.

"You...did...this...to...her!" I punctuated every word with a blow. He didn't bother retaliating, and my punches did no good. He was as solid and hard as stone, and after a few minutes of hurling everything I had at him, I sank to the ground.

"What are you?" I asked when I got my breath back, tears coursing down my face again. He ignored my question.

"She's rather good-looking, don't you think? I would say that she takes after me. But she does have extraordinarily bright eyes. I certainly can't take the credit for that. My eyes were hazel before I was turned." He looked pleased.

"What?"

"Turned," he said slowly, as if speaking to an imbecile. "You haven't figured it out yet? Do I have to sport fangs and a bad Transylvanian accent? Really, with the blood and everything?" It slammed into me with the force of a ramming truck.

"You're a vampire," I said simply. Nothing had the ability to surprise me anymore. "And I've seen you before."

"Of course you have. I've been around, making sure your little friend was doing alright. She did seem rather robust, likely to survive this far. That's why I picked her. And because she was rather pretty, as humans go. You're nice-looking too,don't get me wrong, but really, you're much too thin and delicate. And the opportunity presented itself perfectly."

"I saw you at the mall." Things were becoming clearer and clearer. "And you're the one who left the bottles of blood."

"Correct on both counts," he said. "Really, Maya, I had thought you were smarter than this."

"You've been listening in on our conversations."

"Now you're just stating the obvious. Oh, and I need to do one more thing before I get ready to destroy the evidence."

"Huh?" I said aloud, but Everett's teeth were already buried in my neck.


	10. Chapter 9

**To any of you who are still with me after I threw that at you, thanks. You're all the best, and I'm really sorry. I know that an apology sounds weird at this point, but there wasn't anything to do without being a total Twilight copycat, I'd already hinted at it in the beginning, and I had/have a basic outline for the rest of the story that not killing Amanda would've ruined. Yeah. So back to that cliffhanger-esque place I left you.**

I was too tired, too lightheaded, too sick of life throwing curve balls at me to even struggle against his vise-like grip on my neck. There was no point, really. I was going to die. He'd killed Amanda, and now he was going to kill me. Simple, really.

I lost my footing, and the vampire had to hold me upright. I didn't care, I only shuddered at the cold feel of his hands. Then I shuddered even more simply because I was rapidly losing blood.

I didn't expect it, but before I knew it, I was being dropped onto the grass.

"Wh-what?" I choked out stupidly, feeling blindly for the puncture wounds with one hand. I had just discovered that they weren't there, when a sudden burning crept along my neck, seeming to scorch me on its way.

I cried out and clutched my neck. I felt the fire continue on its way, burning though me like I'd been soaked with gasoline beforehand.

I stopped clutching my neck. It had spread, and my hands were just as much on fire as my neck.

"What did you do?!" I screamed.

"Is it that hard to figure out? Perhaps I ought to make some allowances for grief." Everett flashed a wide, blindingly white smile at me, but I didn't feel unnerved or reassured. All I felt was the pain.

I didn't bother to say another word to him. But I screamed. I screamed because I was sad and empty, because I was frustrated, but mostly because of the pain. It was greater than anything I'd ever imagined, or cared to imagine. I squeezed my eyes shut.

I wanted to die. There it was. I had gone from accepting death at the hands of my friend's murderer to actually begging for death. I'd wanted a lot before. I'd wanted to model, to get out of my hometown and be famous.

Everyone said I ought to be able to. I was the tallest girl in my school, I was thin and flat-chested. I was assured I could arrange my features to look good on camera. I could strut in high-heeled shoes that made me almost bump my head on the ceiling.

Not just that but, hopeless romantic that I was, I'd wanted to go and find that someone. That special person I could spend the rest of my life with. My soul mate, if you will. _The One_. I had a boyfriend, Aaron, but I didn't feel very much for him. He was cute, and he was tall enough to let me wear heels for once. That was about it. But now those dreams were crushed.

I wondered how much longer this was going to take. I couldn't tell. Had it been minutes? Hours? Days? The pain didn't allow for a clock, or any estimate. Amanda's had been quick, at least.

Eternities passed by in irrationally slow motion. I was completely unaware of my surroundings, just of the scorching fire moving through my bloodstream. Little by little, however, I managed to regain some of my senses. I could hear and if I had opened my eyes, I would be able to see. I had long since stopped screaming. My throat was dry and hoarse.

The boiling hot pain seemed to dim a tiny bit in my extremities. I hoped that meant I was finally dying. Finally going to leave this pain behind, wherever I would go.

All of my muscles were tensed, even though I was beyond tired, the pain was ever-present. I was tossing and flailing, moaning with my weak voice. I cracked my eyes open. I needed to see, if only for the last time, because I didn't think I could take another moment of this. Everything was in blindingly bright detail I'd never remembered seeing before. It was probably in comparison to the depressing darkness of the inside of my eyelids.

I moved my eyes sluggishly. There was Everett. Of course. Sadist. He wanted to see me die. He'd probably been watching the entire scene in the car, too.

"The transformation is almost complete," he said, noticing my eyes were open. My confusion deepened.

"Yes. You will become a vampire. And I must say, it's doing wonders for your looks, which were decent in the first place."

I was speechless. A vampire? This could not, should not be true. I refused to become what had killed Amanda. It couldn't happen. Everything was ruined. Everything. How could I even comprehend living with myself after this. Ha! Living. I wouldn't be living. I'd be undead.

My heartbeat quickened, and I assumed it was because of my shock. Adrenaline rush, that sort of thing. It didn't decrease or increase the pain, so I didn't care.

"Do you hear that? It's nearly finished," Everett sounded almost smug. I groaned with the pain.

It now seemed to be increasing. _To the pain_, I thought. This was no time for _Princess Bride_ quotes, but it seemed a strangely appropriate way to end my humanity. Never let it be said that I didn't go out with a bang.

My heart seemed to race against time itself. Going faster and faster, thumping so loudly I could feel it throughout my body, echoing the pain that seemed to erupt in my veins, as if it had been lava running through them.

I had my eyes squeezed shut again, bracing myself. With one final heavy thump, my heart lay silent, the pain came to a halt, and I lay still, afraid that one move could make it restart. My breathing restarting, but felt somehow different.

"You do realize that you can get up now, correct?" I heard a sarcastic voice say from above me.

I slowly opened my eyes. Then I sat up. I examined myself to see what was different.

My eyes stopped on my hands. They were beyond pale. Every bit of tan that I had worked up had disappeared. I was the color of bone. I was as pale as Everett. Not only that, but my hands were no longer bony. Though of a similar size, they possessed effortless grace.

"Why?" I asked simply. Why not have killed me, too? Why not have let me leave? Why have me filled in on everything?

"Well for one, you were one of the most beautiful humans I've come across in a while, and it would be a shame not to have that beauty reach its full potential." I ducked my head down, embarrassed.

"And for another, I'm not a horribly cruel man. I kill because I have to to eat, and I killed your small friend so that I could have a child. I did so want one, and I heard of one made on the other side of the country. There was no such reason to kill you. But you did have to be taken care of one way or another."

"Bullshit," I said. "And where is Vitality?"

"I'm not sure that is a good idea. You see, you're a newborn. You crave blood. Little, um, Vitality is half human and is in fact full of blood, though she's not nearly as tempting as an actual human. She's perfectly safe. She understands about you."

"She _understands_? She's only..."

"Three days old," he finished. "And she's quite extraordinary. She's also gotten much larger."

"Three days! I was out for three days!"

"You're immortal now. You're doubtlessly going to live an unforeseeably long life, so don't even bother about three little days."

"Wh-what?"

"Ah, I see. I really ought to fill you in. First, you may be feeling rather thirsty. Would you care to join me in hunting?"

"Hunting?"

"Well, not in the traditional sense, with guns. You are basically now a weapon yourself. And our prey might be considered unusual."

I sprang to my feet. And I do mean _sprang_. It was the smoothest, most graceful, fastest movement I had ever made. I started to see what he meant. I felt different, stronger, more alive, strange as it sounded.

"I am not going to kill anyone!" I shrieked.

"You will. You need it to survive. And you won't be able to resist."

"I think I can resist the urge to _kill people_."

"You don't understand because you haven't been tempted. Right now, you are stronger than you ever have been or ever will be, but your willpower is weak. I will not let you near my daughter! Not until you're satiated," he looked scarily determined. I certainly wouldn't have figured him for the paternal type. Plus he looked somewhere between seventeen and twenty. I always had been horrible at figuring out age.

"You don't understand. I need to care for Vitality. I promised my best friend! I said I'd abandon her for adoption, but since I seem to be free for the next eternity..."

"Using sarcasm as a weapon I see. It won't do you any good. And why that girl saddled my child with that name..." He shook his head.

"She had more right than you ever did to name that baby!" I put my hands on my hips.

"I acknowledge that she was her mother. I have no intention of changing her name. But do you think it could be shortened to some semblance of normalcy?"

"Like what? Vitamin?" I said bitingly. He was bringing out every mean bone in my body, including a few I wasn't aware of.

"Amusing. I was thinking more along the lines of Talia. Possibly Tally."

"I can live with that." Well, not so much live.

"Oh, I nearly forgot. I did get a mirror for you. I believe it's customary to see how your reflection has changed." He pulled a small compact mirror from his pocket.

"What's changed? Besides being pale." I sounded panicked and I knew it. I had lost enough. I didn't want to lose my appearance. I instinctively backed up several steps.

"Do you think I was born looking like this? I wasn't extraordinarily handsome as a human. The change has affected your looks as well." He placed the mirror into my reluctant hand.

I opened it and tentatively looked at my own reflection. I gasped. The first thing that I saw were my own eyes, looking back at me. Instead of being their usual almost-amber color, the eyes that stared directly back into mine were the most vibrant red I could ever have imagined. While my eyes were always fairly large and far apart, the red made them appear ever bigger.

My pallor was the next thing that caught my eye. I had never been close to that pale. Not in winter, not even on the parts of my body that never saw the sun. But I was now. It made my brown hair, which had blond highlights from the sun and the salon, seem darker. It was the same as it had always been, several inches past my shoulders, which was a huge relief to me. Especially once I saw the rest of my face.

Every single flaw I had had been corrected, my features somehow streamlined. My face was a perfect oval. My lips, which had never been my best feature, being somewhat thin, were now full and bow-shaped. My cheekbones were even more prominent. And there was that indefinable quality we called beauty. No one seemed to be able to come up with the formula for perfect beauty, but then I saw it stare me back in the face. Now, any modeling agency would hire me on the spot.

Normally, I didn't look in the mirror overly much. It made me feel vain. This, however, did not make me feel vain at all. This wasn't me. I was admiring some stranger, my better-looking twin who'd spent her life indoors. I couldn't look away. I was more beautiful than any movie-star or model. I was even more beautiful than Everett.

"Narcissus, perhaps you had better stop before you fall in love with yourself. I do admit you are among the more beautiful of our kind, but I do think you ought to satisfy your thirst," he said impatiently. He took the mirror back.

If I could have blushed, I would have. I looked down and noticed my body was also somewhat different. I had somehow gained curves without appearing any larger. This change was more than I felt like taking.

It seemed like the only link to my past was Vitality, Amanda's daughter. I was prepared to do whatever I had to in order to be reunited. All my dormant maternal instincts were brought out by her.

"Only to see Vitality," I clarified. "So how does this work?"

"Well, if you had better control, you could yourself be bait. Today, I suppose I'll have to help you," he said, matter-of-factly. I closed my eyes and prepared myself for what I knew would be a horrid and excruciating experience. And not just for me, either.


	11. Chapter 10

**Sorry about this being somewhat on the late side. I came down with a bad, and somewhat unseasonal, cold. This pretty much equals no energy. Which means no chapter. I'm actually on Nyquil right now, so this may not be my best work... **

**Enjoy!**

"Well, first you must breathe," Everett said.

"No shit, sherlock. Breathing is sort of what you do."

"Technically, you no longer have to breathe. And secondly, you only do it now for scent. Smell the air." He said all of this in a very hoity toity tone that made me want to kill him even more. No exaggeration. I truly did want to kill him for all he'd done.

"Well thank you for clarifying all of this. It would have been so inconvenient to tell me all of this _when I first woke up," _I snapped.

"There is a great amount of knowledge about our kind. I cannot simply impart it to you within a few moments. Now tell me if you smell anything nearby."

I glared at him, then did as he said and took in a deep breath through my nose. Everything was clear. I could smell the grass, the nearby woods, the feral smell of the animals, and something else, something astoundingly appetizing. Something so amazingly delicious I couldn't contain myself.

I sprinted across the field. Wind whipped through my hair and the distance flew under my fleet footsteps. I immediately came upon two figures. The aroma was coming from them. Both of them. A slightly different one from each.

I leapt into the air while running and landed upon the larger one. I latched onto it and sucked greedily, tearing it when it struggled. Eventually, it stopped struggling and lay still. This made it easier to drain.

I brought my head up. The thirst wasn't quenched. At all. I could smell the other one, though. It wasn't here. Where had it gone? I wanted it. I wanted it badly.

I took off in the direction it must have gone. I vaguely remembered some high-pitched sound coming from it while I drank. In only a few short seconds, I came upon it and tackled it to the ground, snarling. I drained it like I had the first.

Quenched, I looked around. Where was that no good son of a... Then it hit me. What I had done.

I looked down and saw a woman, perhaps in her thirties. An expression of horror was on her drained corpse. The truth slammed into me at ramming speed. I had killed her. And I had also killed what must have been her husband or boyfriend. Perhaps they were out for a walk. Never had they expected to be killed by a monster.

I dropped to my knees and dry sobbed. No tears came out, but a lot of guilt did. I couldn't even think about how to live with myself. I was a horrible excuse for a person. I was a monster. I was a creature of evil. Pure evil.

"It's always hard the first time," Everett commented. "It will get easier."

"Just because you're happy being a cold-blooded killer doesn't mean I am," I protested. He was directly behind me. I spun around and looked him straight in the eye.

"It's the natural order of things. Like a lion will eat an adorable baby deer, or a hawk will carry off a mouse, we feed on them because we outrank them on the food chain, so to speak. You ate hamburger as a human, I'm sure?"

"But cows aren't like people. They don't have thoughts and feelings."

"And compared to us, humans are like cows: stupid, unimaginative things."

I ignored him. I wasn't going to fight him. There was just one thing I had to do.

"When am I going to see Vitality?" I demanded.

"Well perhaps once you stop looking like a horror movie," he said. He eyed my shorts and t-shirt, now splattered with blood from both Amanda and the couple.

"What's it matter? I guarantee she's seen gore before. I was there." I glared like I'd never glared before. I hoped the red eyes made me seem even scarier.

"Walking around in clothing like that is a bad habit to get into. Humans tend to get suspicious. You'll learn how to feed neatly soon, though."

"I have to do this again?" I blurted.

"Of course. I've been saying it all day. It's as necessary as food and water were to you as a human."

"I'll argue later. My patience is wearing thin."

"Then follow me." he took off faster than the blink of an eye into a nearby copse of woods. I followed, not able to go nearly as fast, but keeping him in my line of vision.

He was standing still, holding out a pair of jeans and a white shirt. I hadn't even noticed him fetching them. It made me think that he'd got them while I was out and had stashed them somewhere.

I snatched them out of his hands and got behind a large pine tree. I changed hastily, sticking my old clothes in a shallow hole I dug within seconds. Everything fit, but that was no surprise. My eyesight had improved drastically. He'd probably been able to see what would fit very accurately.

"Now _where_?" I asked in an exasperated tone.

"You truly feel you can control yourself?"

"Yes!" I practically shrieked.

"That back there wasn't controlling yourself," he pointed out.

"Could you not remind me? I was just trying to get this over with. I do need to see her."

"Do anything to her and I will make sure you die a painful death," he said quietly, taking a step back.

"You've already done that to me," I said. "But she'll be safe."

"Good," he said. Then he ran for a few seconds, with me following behind. We probably had covered about a mile.

He'd spread a small blanket on the ground. On it was a baby. She was stretched out, sleeping. She was dressed in a small little pink dress. But this was not the baby from my memory.

Her hair was still perfectly on the line between blond and brown, but it was already past her chin. Her skin was about as pale as you ever see ordinary humans' go. A very light peachy shade, as opposed to chalky. She was bigger, easily twice her original size. She appeared to be around two or three months old.

"What the hell," I whispered in a voice unlikely to be heard by anything with less than perfect hearing. Hopefully that included Vitality.

"Did you expect her to stop growing at her previous rate because she was born?" he hissed back. Touche.

I could smell her. Thankfully, it wasn't nearly as overpowering as the humans I had... Well, I could resist her. Nothing would ever make me hurt her like that. Amanda didn't die so that I could kill her child.

I tentatively knelt down and smoothed the hair out of her face. Still exquisitely beautiful, but I was sure I could see Amanda in her. Especially once she opened her eyes.

She opened her eyes a few moments after my touch had woken her and yawned. It was perhaps the most adorable thing I had ever seen.

Her gaze met mine. It was pensive, and then a recognition stirred in those bright eyes. It wasn't slow, like a child's. It was adult. She looked so wise.

She stretched her arms up to me and gave a brilliant smile. There was nothing else to do but bend down and cradle her softly, as only a vampire could. She felt very warm, against my cold, hard skin. She didn't seem to care though, as she snuggled into me.

I looked down at her sweet face, matched by her knowing eyes. I knew exactly what I had to do. What Amanda would want me to do. I looked up at Everett and hugged her closer.

"We're leaving," I said loudly and clearly. Then I turned around and took a few steps away.

A feral snarl made me stop dead in my tracks. He was right in front of me, his red eyes blazing, his stance light, as though he was about to leap at me.

"I'm not going to have her around here," I said. "This isn't what she'd want."

"What _she _would want doesn't matter. She's gone. That baby isn't her. My daughter won't bring your friend back."

"Regardless, she can't grow up here," I insisted. Vitality had sat up, and was looking back and forth between us anxiously.

"You think you'd be the better option? You're a seventeen year old girl and a vampire only a few hours old."

"Better than you!"

"You think you're better than me, don't you?" He straightened up and looked at me haughtily. "I saw how eagerly you killed those humans. You enjoyed it. You can call me a murderer, but you are one too."

"I killed because I couldn't help it! It's your fault for turning me into this!"

"And my killing is the fault of the vampire who turned me. I'm no worse than you."

"You raped and killed a girl! That wasn't instinct! That was you. You and your murderous schemes!"

"That was necessary," he said quietly.

"Necessary? For what? This innocent little girl? She has to live with the fact that she killed her mother for every day of her life. This wasn't some stupid _circle of life_ thing. You did it consciously. Amanda had to pay for it, and now Vitality will."

"You could never possibly understand. Vitality, as you call her, is essential. You have no idea what I have been through!" His voice rose dangerously. Vitality hid her face in my shoulder.

"In the movie, this is where you explain your plot to rule the world," I said sarcastically. "Essential? Are you kidding me?"

"No, I don't have any master plots. Maya, this is something that can only be understood by one who has loved and lost." He looked incredibly pained. Like someone was physically torturing him, which I knew to be untrue.

"Is better than never to have loved at all?" I questioned. That was Tennyson, wasn't it?

"Exactly my point. One who knows loss knows that it would have been better to never have felt love."

"Explain," I demanded flatly. He wasn't making sense.

He sighed deeply. "I had a family once. A wife and daughter."

"But you're so young!" I exclaimed.

"I'm twenty years old, physically, and was married at nineteen. I was rather young, but nothing unusual."

"Nothing unusual? That's crazily young to get married!"

"Not in 1886. Would you like the full story or not?" he asked.

I nodded.

"I was born in 1867 on a farm outside a small town in New Hampshire. You definitely haven't heard of it, so I'm not going to bother you with names.

"I had your everyday education. I finished high school and met what would become my future bride. She was pretty, nothing like yourself, of course. But she was sweet and quiet, and when I asked her to marry me, she agreed. I loved her," he trailed off. He said all of this without much emotion, as if it had happened to another person, long ago. It was in stark contrast with his face

"Soon after, we found out we were expecting a child. She was born in 1887. When a coven of vampires came into our home shortly after, looking for their next meal, I tried to fight them off, but I failed. Both of them were killed, and I was changed." He fell silent.

There were so many questions I wanted to ask, so many details he had left out, so much pain underneath his emotionless recitation. But I think I finally understood, at least a little. Enough to say what I was about to tell him.

"Everett, we'll stay."


	12. Chapter 11

**I am well aware that this is insanely late. I apologize sincerely. I would like to let you know that my updates will be sporadic, at best. I'm really sorry, but this year is going to be, without a doubt, the most hectic I've ever experienced. So for those of you who don't remember, Maya heard Everett's story, the simple version, and decided to stay and let Everett help raise his own daughter. Twisted mind that girl has.**

**Seven Years Later**

**Vitality P.o.V.**

I tossed my hip length hair behind my shoulder and gave him a dazzling smile. I knew it was dazzling by the look on his face. As human faces went, it was decent, but I knew perfectly well that I was far out of his league. And he was okay with that.

"So what's your name?" he asked casually, but I could see the eagerness and nerves on his face. He took a seat next to me at the bar and clutched his bottle.

"Tally. What's yours?" My real name attracted too much attention. Vitality was just an odd name, no matter which way you sliced it. I couldn't begrudge my mother of that, though. It was really the only thing she ever did, name me.

"Ben." He swallowed and looked almost relieved when the bartender looked our way. "You want anything?"

"No thanks. I'm not thirsty." Lie. Outright lie. I was thirsty, but I'd much prefer him to alcohol.

"You're legal, though, right?" he asked.

"Yeah," I answered. Another complete lie. I was seven. This guy had no idea who he was dealing with here. But I did look somewhere between eighteen and twenty. Twenty-one wasn't such a stretch.

"So where're you from? I don't think I've seen you around here before."

"Oh, I move around a lot. I was born in Pennsylvania though." All completely true. I'd learned the best lies are made up of truth.

He seemed to have run out of things to say, and was turning very red very quickly. He looked down, which conveniently seemed to be in the general direction of my cleavage. I was in my bait outfit, so I didn't feel particularly comfortable with that.

I spent the next hour completely charming him, talking, hair flipping, smiling, and making an absolute fool of myself wearing the tank top, skirt, and heels that were perfect for these situations. My hair and face needed no help. The blond-brown strands were perfectly straight, and my face was as exquisite as any vampires'.

"Would you like to step outside?" I asked. "It's so hot in here."

He readily agreed, and we stepped out into the late summer night. His hand barely touched the small of my back, but it took every bit of willpower I had not to swipe it off. We walked to a deserted corner of the parking lot, and he bent his head down, exposing his throat to me. This was just too easy.

I jumped him, latching onto his neck and the sweet veins that lived there. I covered his mouth with one hand, keeping him from making any noise. It really should have been a lot more difficult, seeing as he was over six feet tall and fairly large. I was not quite five foot four.

When he was drained, and I was feeling insanely full, I picked up the body and ran into the nearby woods. This was why we always came to places with lots of forest around. We could dig a real deep hole, and be on our way before the cops got up a good search-party.

I hated myself even more as I shoved Ben into his hole and shoved the dirt back over him. This was sick. I would do almost anything to be human, like him and all the pathetic girls he'd probably gone out with before. And his family. And his friends. I was so horrible. And that was without bringing my mother into the equation.

I was completely responsible for her death. Maya had even said so, way back when, when I was only a few days old and couldn't even talk. I always pretended I didn't remember, and she went along with it. The words haunted me every single day, and every single time I took a human life, though I supposed I too was partly human.

_She has to live with the fact that she killed her mother for every day of her life. _

I ran, fast even for me, back to the small clearing, where Maya and Dad were setting up camp, as they called it. They were arguing, yet again. It just never ended. I couldn't count the number of times Maya had taken my by the hand and announced that we were leaving, and that she couldn't stand to be with Dad for another minute.

"I do not approve of her going out like that!" Dad snapped.

"Exactly how else is she going to get their attention? I dress like that all the time and you don't say anything!"

"You're not my daughter!"

"She looks your age!" Maya said, exasperated. "You can't keep using that one. And she might as well be my daughter!"

"Do I get a say here?" I interrupted.

"You're seven years old, Vitality. You don't get a say. Dressing like a hooker is not appropriate."

"And you're one hundred forty-nine, Dad. Since when do we act and look our age? You're acting like a forty-something, fat, balding father!"

"With all the experience of almost a hundred and fifty years. You, despite having a very well developed intellect, don't have nearly as much life experience to base your opinions off of."

"And when you were my age, women weren't allowed to show their ankles in public. Your point of view might be biased," I pointed out.

Maya laughed, "I think she has you there."

"She most certainly does not. However, it may be wise to move on, if Vitality has done what it appears she has."

I rolled my eyes, hiding the self-loathing I felt inside. I was a master at hiding my emotions. I simply changed into a much less conspicuous pair of jeans and t-shirt, complete with running shoes. I slipped into my backpack, which held my few clothes, as well as the money we managed to steal every once in a while. Dad had been collecting since long before either Maya or I was born, so we were quite well-off.

Maya and Dad waited patiently during the few seconds it took to change. They bickered like an old married couple, but were the farthest thing from it. I used to want them to be together, but that dream was crushed before I was three.

Maya was the closest thing to a mother I had, as she was my actual mother's best friend. She'd promised to take care of me, and she still did. Even now when I looked the slightest bit older than her. She ought to be twenty-four, but she was frozen as a seventeen-year-old. The most beautiful seventeen-year-old I had ever seen, with light brown hair and angelic, yet sharp features. She made me look passingly pretty. She also happened to be over half a foot taller than me, and extremely thin where I was curvaceous. It was like living with a top model.

Dad was forever twenty, and he too had light brown hair. The three of us passed as siblings when we went out together, and with our looks and our similar hair color, no one doubted it for an instant.

The two of them hit the ground running, and I followed behind, unable to go as fast. I struggled even though I knew they were purposely slowing their speed for me. It seemed to be my fate. Superior to the humans, and inferior to the vampires, and hating myself every minute for it.


End file.
